Working in Movement

There's been a lot of glittery stuff about how brain imaging reveals where stuff happens in the human nervous system. Searching for the person in the brain makes the point that the brain has become a pop star of sorts with all this stuff about what's going on where in the brain. But if I understand what this author is getting at, sure, they'll locate the area of the brain where these activities show up during a brain scan, but that won't mean that imaging is a tool to understand people. That's because the images don't see the complete series of complex interactions in the brain associated with this activity. Maybe it will someday.

In the meantime, though, we can be misled by the images into thinking we're really on to something here. But even some in the neuroscience field are wise to the shortcomings.

"Any new method in neuroscience is powerful in terms of evolution of the field only insofar as it tells us that something we thought we knew is wrong," said Dr. J. Anthony Movshon, director of New York University's Center for Neural Science. So far, he said, brain imaging has not done that.

The technology, he said, though now central to brain science, "is in one sense disappointing, in that so far it has told us nothing more than what a neurologist of the 19th century could have told you about brain functions and where they're localized."

And others see risk in investing in the glitter over the substance.

"The risk is that seeing the neural activity allows people to take away or excuse responsibility for a behavior — to take away the individual person," said Dr. (Lucy)Brown of the Einstein School of Medicine in New York.

I agree that it can be entertaining to read about the studies and even to imagine that we know what's going on. But I like even more the idea that the striking distinctiveness of each individual goes beyond connections of neurons or whatever else.