Click here to Read: Beyond the Brain By David Brooks in The New York Times on June 17, 2013.
David Brooks on “Neurocentrism”
Brooks in today’s NYT’s column cites several recent books that reframe the popularity of brain picturing in today’s science and popular press.
He summarizes four conceptual complications about using brain imaging alone to explain our functioning. First, that a brain region may serve a variety of different tasks. Second, (and complementary), that one task may use different brain reactions or states. Third, that one activity, such as ‘working memory’, may distribute over multiple regions (at least 30 in the case of working memory). Fourth, that meanings vary and are not clearly explained by brain locations. Fifth, that agency “bedevils all methods that mimic physics to mimic human behavior.
Brooks refers to Shulman’s “Brain Imaging” and Satel and Lilienfeld’s “Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience.”
This work should not stop us from pursuing good science, like some Luddites, only to reign-in overenthusiastic conclusions.
N. Szajnberg, MD, Managing Editor