The document summarizes a talk given by James Lawley on the topic of neuroscience myths, metaphors, and marketing. Some key points made in the talk include distinguishing quality neuroscience research from overblown claims, conceptual problems with fMRI studies including poor replication and the difficulty of linking brain activation to specific functions, and the need for skepticism of neuroscience claims reported outside of peer-reviewed research.
2. Policy Statement
I admire the scope, scale and achievement of neuroscience.
This talk is not intended to diminish the work of any
neuroscientist or psychotherapist.
My aim is to help us distinguish between:
– quality neuroscience and inferences drawn therefrom
and
– what Raymond Tallis calls “Neuromania”.
2
James Lawley
3. EXERCISE
!
1.Name a piece of neurological research that has
influenced the way you do therapy.
2.What do you do differently with your clients
as a result of the research?
4. Watch first two minutes of video :
http://www.schoolsworld.tv/node/2887
5. A connectome is
the totality of connections
between the neurons in a
nervous system.
7. What do you make of this quote from a
leading psychotherapist?:
!
“The role of the psychotherapist is brought into a
new light through the implications of working
with psychoneuroimmunology.
... Validating the client’s model of the world and
negative feelings, the therapist enables
neurotransmitters associated with the negative
state to be released from the subcortex and the
existing neural networks activated.”
7
8. And this one?:
“As soon as the client accesses the future-oriented state, the
neurological potential is then created for change to happen.
Solution-oriented therapy ... ensures that the client fires
the neurological pathway a number of times in therapy,
making it easier to re-access once the session has ended. ...
This process reinforces the ‘not problem’ state, again
reinforcing positive neurological patterning.
At this next session, we both noted that he could more easily
move towards future-oriented thinking ... This was evidence
that the neurological re-patterning that we had done in the
previous week had started to work.”
9. “As soon as the client accesses the future-oriented state, the
neurological potential is then created for change to happen.
Solution-oriented therapy ... ensures that the client fires
the neurological pathway a number of times in therapy,
making it easier to re-access once the session has ended. ...
This process reinforces the ‘not problem’ state, again
reinforcing positive neurological patterning.
At this next session, we both noted that he could more easily
move towards future-oriented thinking ... This was evidence
that the neurological re-patterning that we had done in the
previous week had started to work.”
psycho
Does changing one prefix change the meaning?:
psycho
psycho
psycho
10. “Your prefrontal cortex is the biological seat of your
conscious interactions with the world. It’s the part of your
brain central to thinking things through. ... Getting
everything ‘just right’ for the prefrontal cortex is what
Emily needs to learns to do, to get on top of the extra
information she is juggling in her new job.”
!
David Rock, Your Brain at Work p. 6
!
!
“A question I ask my clients all time is:
What does your brain need right now to move forward?”
!
David Rock, A Brain-Based Approach to Coaching, International Journal of Coaching in Organizations 2006 4(2)
What do you think Emily and other clients make
of this question?
11. “[Neuro-talk] is often accompanied by a picture of a brain scan,
that fast-acting solvent of critical faculties.”
Matthew Crawford ‘The Limits of Neuro-Talk’
12. CAT Computed axial tomography
DOT Diffuse optical tomography
EEG Electroencephalography
EROS Event-related optical signal
MEG Magnetoencephalography
MRI Magnetic resonance imaging (structural)
fMRI Functional MRI
dMRI Diffusion MRI
NIRS Near infrared spectroscopy
PET Positron emission tomography
SPECT Single-photon emission computed tomography
BRAIN IMAGINING
TECHNIQUES
13. Can you guess what experience this brain scan is showing ?
14. An image of the brain of Nan Wise,
who volunteered to have an orgasm while inside an fMRI
15. • Technical Problems with fMRI
‣ Measures oxygen in the blood as a proxy for brain activity. Millions of
neurons have to be activated for a change in blood flow to be detected.
‣ Neuronal activity lasts milliseconds while detected changes in blood
flow lag by 2-10 seconds.
‣ Brain is changing all the time – somewhere is always ‘lit up’.
‣ Images made up of voxels, each representing at best 10,000+ neurons.
‣ Each scan has 50,000 data points; thousands of scans in a study means
many millions of comparisons. Massively complex analysis required –
7 million lines of code.
‣ A big problem is false positives – thousands of published studies
conducted without corrections for false positives.
‣ Some researchers pick out the ‘best’ results.
‣ Spurious ‘brain activity’ related to non-existent tasks found with
standard settings on the most popular fMRI analysis software.
16. Functional MRI scans of six people who
took the same spatial memory test
tal functions to particular brain regions. Critics
feel that fMRI overlooks the networked or dis-
tributed nature of the brain’s workings, empha-
sizing localized activity when it is the communi-
cation among regions that is most critical to men-
tal function.
“This is a very gross technique,” says critic
Steven Faux , who heads the psychology depart-
ment at Drake University. “It’s like a blurry pho-
to—better than no photo but still blurry, with
real limitations that are too often overlooked.
It’s very easy to overextend [the value of] this
technology.”
Many fMRI practitioners seem bewildered
that this powerful new tool has created contro-
versy. “It is a huge surprise to me how big this
issue has become,” says Marcus E. Raichle, a
Washington University neurologist who has re-
searched brain scanning for more than two
decades.
Vague Precision
Brain imaging began with an early 20th-cen-
tury method called pneumoencephalography, a
dangerous procedure in which the skull’s cere-
brospinal fluid was replaced with air to show the
brain more clearly on x-ray. The angiograph, de-
veloped in the 1920s, produced improved results
The 1970s also brought the first functional
imaging technology—scans designed to show
not just how the brain is structured but how it
functions. Positron emission tomography (PET)
measures increases in blood flow associated with
neuronal activity, giving a sense of which neu-
rons may be processing information. A subject
is injected with radioactive elements that tag
molecules such as glucose that are delivered to
the brain by blood. The tags emit positrons and
reveal the relative rates at which cells consume
the glucose, a marker of which cells are active
during mental processes. The scans are captivat-
ing, but there are a number of drawbacks. Sub-
jects worry about taking in radioactive material;
the process requires the better part of an hour
for a scan; and the images provide a rather broad
temporal resolution of 60 seconds (meaning it
takes that long to measure the blood flow to an
area) and a spatial resolution of six to nine cubic
millimeters—large for a nuanced understanding
of what is happening.
In contrast, fMRI can scan a brain cross sec-
tion in less than two seconds, enabling it to mod-
el most of the brain in one to two minutes. It can
work at spatial resolutions as fine as two to three
cubic millimeters, although in practice it usually
collects information in voxels (a term that merg-
Functional MRI
scans of six
people who
took the same
spatial memory
test show how
varied brain
activation pat-
terns can be.
Scientists must
design fMRI ex-
periments care-
fully to avoid
misleading
conclusions.
sconsin–Milwaukee
www.sciammind.com 27
flow rises. Doubts about whether these increases
correspond to actual neuronal activity have been
answered by several studies tying blood flow di-
rectly to neuron signaling, including recent ani-
mal models that used probes to match the firing
of individual neurons to the heightened flow seen
in fMRI scans.
Yet the link is decidedly rough. Abigail A.
Baird, a Dartmouth College psychologist who
uses fMRI to study brain changes during adoles-
cence, puts it succinctly: “Hemodynamic re-
sponse is a sloppy thing.” For starters, neuronal
action takes milliseconds, whereas the blood
surge follows by two to six seconds; a detected
increase in blood flow therefore might be “feed-
ing” more than one operation. In addition, be-
cause each voxel encompasses thousands of neu-
rons, thousands or even millions may have to fire
to significantly light up a region; it is as if an
entire section of a stadium had to shout to be
heard.
Meanwhile it is possible that in some cases a
that they become images introduces other cave-
ats. Researchers must choose among and adjust
many different algorithms to extract an accurate
image, compensating along the way for varia-
tions in skull and brain configuration, movement
of subjects in the scanner, noise in the data, and
so on. This “chain of inferences,” as a recent Na-
ture Neuroscience article called it, offers much
opportunity for error.
Finally, most fMRI studies use univariate
processing, which critics say shortchanges the
distributed nature of neurodynamics. The charg-
es rise because univariate (literally “one vari-
able”) algorithms consider the data coming in
from each voxel during a scan as one sum, which
makes it impossible to know how the activity in
a particular voxel accrued (all at once, for in-
stance, or in several pulses) or how it related se-
quentially with activity in other voxels. Univar-
iate processing does see all the parts working—
thus the multiple areas lit up in most images—but
not in a way that shows how one area follows or
COPYRIGHT 2005 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
17. • Question ...
What do you make of these
fMRI test-retest correlations
for subjects engaged in six
sessions of the same activity
conducted over a period of six
weeks?
!
0.56 0.75 0.00
0.42 0.69 0.25
!
Mean = 0.45
!
!
Jian Kong et. al., Test-retest study of fMRI signal
change evoked by electro-acupuncture stimulation,
Neuroimage. 2007 February 1; 34(3): 1171–1181.
18. These subjects engaged in a simple finger-tapping task and yet the
correlations ranged between 0 and 0.76 – imagine the subjects
were doing something useful!
!
A review of papers published in top-ranking journals, including
Science, concluded:
“A disturbingly large and quite prominent segment
of fMRI scan research on emotion, personality and
social cognition is using seriously defective research
methods and producing a profusion of numbers that
should not be believed.”
!
Edward Vul1, Christine Harris, Piotr Winkielman and Harold Pashler, ‘Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of
Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition’ Perspectives on Psychological Science, May 2009 vol. 4 no. 3 274-290.
19. Example of
a neuro-imaging research methodology
‣ The subject was placed in a fMRI scanner.
‣ Subject was shown a series of photographs depicting human
individuals in social situations with a specified emotional
valence.
‣ The subject was asked to determine what emotion one of the
individuals in the photo must have been experiencing.
‣ Each photo was presented for 10 seconds followed by 12
seconds of rest. A total of 15 photos were displayed.
‣ Total scan time was 5.5 minutes.
21. “By complete, random chance, we found some voxels that
were significant ... [even though] the salmon was not
alive at the time of scanning.”
Craig Bennett, neuroscientist, University of California
22. “An fMRI study has shown that
men’s amygdalas light up when they view Ferraris”
!
!
What is wrong with this statement?
23. “An fMRI study demonstrated heightened activity in the
amygdala’s of Democrats and Republicans watching videos
of John Kerry and George W. Bush, concluding
the volunteers were actively trying to dislike the opposition”.
!
!
What is wrong with this statement?
24. • Design flaws in fMRI studies
‣ Less activity in frontal lobes and more in the amygdala of
adolescents than adults looking at black-and-white photographs of
faces of frightened middle-aged people.
But in a much less widely reported follow-up study using colour
photographs, adolescent subjects scored much like adults.
‣ Over 30 studies found physiological markers of ADHD in children
but failed to control for the effects of their subjects’ Ritalin use.
25. • And guess what ...
University students told of fictitious studies such as
“watching television improves maths ability”
judged results to be more scientific and believable
when presented in the form of brain scans
rather than in charts or words.
26. • Conceptual Problems with MRI
‣ Parts of the brain appear again and again, serving different functions.
‣ The same cognitive functions show up in different regions of the brain.
‣ MRI are blind to the connectional anatomy of the human brain.
‣ Activities subjects do are necessarily isolated and simple compared to
the everyday actions of humans.
‣ Conclusions subject to a long ‘chain of inferences’.
‣ Often a confusion between correlation, causation and identity.
‣ Results are extended way beyond their remit, e.g.
Neuroarthistory by John Onians. Professor Emeritus of World Art at the
University of East Anglia.
Time Magazine ran a “Guide to the Neuroscience of Shopping”
29. fMRI sequence shows how grey matter is gradually replaced or
overgrown with white matter between ages 5 and 21.
NOTE: This statement refers to physical changes rather then mental acts.
Functional MRI can map the brain’s composition with exquisite clarity. This sequence shows how gray
matter is gradually replaced or overgrown with white matter between ages 5 and 21. A defense attorney
could ostensibly use such information to ask that a teenager convicted of a violent crime not be
sentenced as an adult since his cognitive capacity is not as fully developed.
Age 5
Age 8 Age 12
Age 16 Age 20
------------------------------------
>0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
Gray
matter
volume
IMAGESCOURTESYOFPAULTHOMPSON,KIRALEEHAYASHIANDARTHURTOGAUniversityofCalifornia,LosAngeles
ANDNITINGOGTAY,JAYGIEDDANDJUDITHRAPOPORTNationalInstituteofMentalHealth
30. EXERCISE
- Look around the room
!
[Lead group through exercise in changing attention.]
!
!
There is nothing in neuroscience that can remotely
explain what you all just did so easily.
31. “The majority of neuroimaging studies
I come across are so flawed,
either due to design or statistical errors,
they add virtually nothing to my knowledge.”
!
Daniel Bor
PhD in cognitive neuroscience, Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge University.
Now at Sackler Centre For Consciousness Science, University of Sussex.
32. How can a layperson know what is a believable MRI study?
1. Our default attitude should be skepticism.
2. Go to blogs written by scientists.
3. Get answers to these questions:
✓ Are the stats properly corrected for multiple tests?
✓ Are the results replicated elsewhere?
✓ If activation areas are linked to a given function, are any other
functions previously linked to these brain regions?
✓ Are there any plausible alternative interpretations of the results?
34. 1891 - 1976
!
!
!
What percentage of Wilder Penfield’s patients
experienced spontaneous memories when he
inserted an electrode into their brain?
Watch one minute video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNdM9JhTPJw
35. 1 in 20
and contemporary surgeons have found it
difficult to replicate some of Penfield’s results.
!
Raymond Tallis, Aping Mankind (2011, p. 93)
36. “... allow us to grasp the minds of others not through
conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation.”
Giacomo Rizzolatti, co-discover of mirror neurons in macaque monkeys
(New York Times, 10 Jan 2006, ‘Cells That Read Minds’)
!
!
!
"... the driving force behind the great leap
forward in human evolution."
V.S. Ramachandran (2000)
37. Except that, most evidence for mirror neurons in
humans is indirect.
“Mirror neurons have not been demonstrated
unequivocally in humans”
Raymond Tallis, Aping Mankind (2011, p. 190)
!
“fMRI’s resolution is not fine enough to distinguish whether
the neurons firing are mirror neurons or just motor cortex
neurons, which fire both when we think about an action and
when we actually perform an action.”
!
Marco Iacoboni, a mirror neuron expert at the University of California, quoted in
Monkey See, Monkey Don't by Nikhil Swaminathan February 3, 2011 Scientific American Mind
!
!
37
38. Neuroplasticity
!
In the 1960s Mark Rosenzweig
showed there were changes in the
brains of laboratory rats that were
raised in enriched or impoverished
environments.
!
An enriched cage slightly
enlarged the cortex on average and
the rats performed better on
problem solving tests.
This was the first demonstration
that experience causes the brain
structure to change.
!
1922 – 2009
38
39. London taxi drivers have an
enlarged right posterior
hippocampus, which is the region
of the cortex thought to be involved
in navigation.
In musicians, the cerebellum is
larger and certain cortical regions
are thicker.
Bilinguals have a thicker cortex in
the lower part of the left parietal
lobe.
40. However ...
!
“[Rosenzweig] did not prove that it was the thickening that
caused the improvement in the intelligence. We can only say
that cortical thickening with learning are correlated.
Furthermore, the correlation is weak, revealed only by averages
over groups. Cortical thickening is not a reliable predictor of
learning in individuals.”
!
Sebastian Seung
Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. (2012, p. 25)
Professor of Computational Neuroscience at MIT.
41. Minds differ because neural networks differ.
Personality, IQ and memories are encoded in neural networks.
!
“Although this theory has been around for a long time,
neuroscientists still don’t know if it’s true. These ideas may
sound powerful, but there’s a catch: they have never been subjected
to conclusive experimental tests ... because neuroscientists have
lacked good techniques for mapping the connections between
neurons”
Sebastian Seung (2012)
Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. p. xiv-xx
Professor of Computational Neuroscience at MIT.
42. Yes, but ...
!
“Although this theory has been around for a long time,
neuroscientists still don’t know if it’s true. These ideas
may sound powerful, but there’s a catch: they have never
been subjected to conclusive experimental tests ... because
neuroscientists have lacked good techniques for mapping
the connections between neurons”
Sebastian Seung
Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. (2012, p. xiv-xx)
43. Thinking leading to Neuromania
Mixing Logical Levels
“There is only one sort of stuff, namely
matter – the physical stuff of physics,
chemistry and physiology – and the
mind is somehow nothing but a physical
phenomenon.
!
In short, the mind is the brain ... We can
(in principle!) account for every mental
phenomenon using physical principles,
laws and raw materials.”
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained, p. 33
MATTER
CELLS
BRAIN
MIND
44. Thinking leading to Neuromania
Mixing metaphors
“Nervous systems are information-processing machines.”
Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy.
“The brain can now be described as an incredibly powerful
microprocessor, the mother of all motherboards.”
Dr Vinoth Ramachandra
“Artificial intelligence is the science and engineering of
making intelligent machines.” John McCarthy
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
Metaphor
Metaphor
45. Thinking leading to Neuromania
Anthropomorphising
Animating the material world with human
characteristics, e.g. the brain doesn’t:
calculate, signal, decide, detect, process,
notice, trick, fool or deceive us, light up,
represents, or store
(and nor do computers!)
“When the reptilian brain takes over the
frontal cortex shuts down.”
“The amygdala stops talking to the
hypothalamus.”
“Anti-anxiety molecules”
46. Thinking leading to Neuromania
Unwitting metonymy
‣ Mistaking a part for the whole. e.g.
Nobel prize winner Eric Kandel claimed he
could capture “memory in a dish”.
Localising a distributed, massively interconnected,
small-world network (<3 degrees of separation).
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
“The brain - that's my second most favourite organ!” Woody Allen
47. The truth is ...
!
“As a neuroscientist myself, I have come to know firsthand
[the] feeling of dread [when] I speak to the public about the
state of our field. My audience [is] curious about brains that
malfunction or excel, but even the humdrum lacks
explanation.
Every day we recall the past, perceive the present, and imagine
the future. How do our brains accomplish these feats?
It’s safe to say that nobody really knows.”
!
Sebastian Seung
48. "To map the human brain at the cellular level, we're talking
about 1m petabytes of information. Most people think that
is more than the digital content of the world right now.
I'd settle for a mouse brain, but we're not even ready to do
that. We're still working on how to do one cubic millimetre."
!
"Sooner or later humans are going to have to confront the
fact that we don't know how the brain works."
!
!
Jeff Lichtman, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University
quoted in The Guardian. 7 May 2012.
49. !
“Fifty years of research shows that
we don’t understand what neural networks are doing.”
!
!
Dr. Michael Harré, Principle Investigator at Large,
Centre for the Mind, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney
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