Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience

Here’s a spot that lights up when subjects think of God (“Religion center found!”), or researchers find a region for love (“Love found in the brain”).

A fifth caveat stems from the fact that fMRI is an indirect method. Contrary to popular belief, imaging does not measure action of brain cells per se.

For example, there is a delay of at least two to five seconds between activation of neurons and the increase in oxygen-rich blood flowing to them.

Neuroscientists now think of the brain as an ever-changing ecosystem crackling with electrochemical energy from which our thoughts, emotions, and intentions arise, rather than a collection of blinking neural islands.

Studies that suggest a “brain spot for X” are typically misleading because mental functions are rarely localized to one place in the brain.

The prime impetus behind this enthusiasm is a form of brain imaging called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an instrument that came of age a mere two decades ago, which measures brain activity and converts it into the now-iconic vibrant images one sees in the science pages of the daily newspaper.

“neurocentrism”—the view that human experience and behavior can be best explained from the predominant or even exclusive perspective of the brain.

Those beautiful color-dappled images are actually representations of particular areas in the brain that are working the hardest—as measured by increased oxygen consumption—when a subject performs a task such as reading a passage or reacting to stimuli, such as pictures of faces.

Looking to the future, some neuroscientists envision a dramatic transformation of criminal law. David Eagleman, for one, welcomes a time when “we may someday find that many types of bad behavior have a basic biological explanation [and] eventually think about bad decision making in the same way we think about any physical process, such as diabetes