Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience

“Three Problems in the Marriage of Neuroscience and Education,” Cortex 45 (2009): 544–545; and Larry Cuban, “Brain-Based Education—Run from It,” Washington Post, February 28, 2011,

“The only thing different about neuroscience,” according to Morse, “is that we have prettier pictures and it appears more scientific.”

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

A first cousin of naive realism, neurorealism denotes the misbegotten propensity to regard brain images as inherently more “real” or valid than other types of behavioral data.

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”).

To repeat: It’s all too easy for the nonexpert to lose sight of the fact that fMRI and other brain-imaging techniques do not literally read thoughts or feelings.

The key problem with neurocentrism is that it devalues the importance of psychological explanations and environmental factors, such as familial chaos, stress, and widespread access to drugs, in sustaining addiction.

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

see neuroscientists as the “new high priests of the secrets of the psyche and explainers of human behavior in general.”