What can’t neuroscience tell us about ourselves? Since fMRI—functional magnetic resonance imaging—was introduced in the early 1990s, brain scans have been used to help politicians understand and manipulate voters, determine guilt in court cases, and make sense of everything from musical aptitude to romantic love. But although brain scans and other neurotechnologies have provided groundbreaking insights into the workings of the human brain, the increasingly fashionable idea that they are the most important means of answering the enduring mysteries of psychology is misguided—and potentially dangerous.
In Brainwashed, mental health specialist and AEI scholar Sally Satel and psychiatrist Scott O. Lilienfeld reveal the number of from the real-world programs of human neuroscience read its restrictions and particulars, sometimes covering-instead of making clear-the myriad factors that shape our behavior and details. Brain scans, Satel and Lilienfeld show, are helpful but frequently ambiguous representations of the highly complex system. Each region from the brain takes part in a number of encounters and interacts along with other regions, so seeing an area light on an fMRI as a result of a stimulus doesn’t instantly indicate a specific sensation or capture the greater cognitive functions which come from individuals interactions. The narrow concentrate on the brain’s physical processes also assumes our subjective encounters could be described away by biology alone. As Satel and Lilienfeld explain, this “neurocentric” look at your brain risks undermining our most deeply held ideas about selfhood, freedom, and private responsibility, putting us vulnerable to making dangerous mistakes, whether within the court docket, interrogation room, or addiction treatment clinic.
A provocative account of our obsession with neuroscience, Brainwashed brilliantly illuminates what contemporary neuroscience and brain imaging can and cannot tell us about ourselves, providing a much-needed reminder about the many factors that make us who we are.
ISBN: 0465018777 | 2013 | EPUB | 256 pages | 503 KB
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