The Varsity - Is this a neuro revolution?

Cool article from a week or so ago. Neuroscience pretends to have the answers to everything, but there are some serious issues with its new favorite tool, the fMRI (not to mention the SPECT scan). Let's start with this:

A typical brain contains 100 billion neurons, each of which makes electrical connections, or synapses, with up to 10,000 other neurons. That means a quadrillion synapses to keep track of at any given time — about the number of stars in the visible universe or the number of people on 150,000 Earths.

When we see an fMRI what we see is a pattern of oxygenated blood flow in the brain in general regions of the brain. We do not really see what is happening at the level of the neurons - fMRI's are the view from 25,000 feet, where we really need is the ground level view or we will never be able to say anything specific about brain function.

Don't take my word for it, though, read Jonah Lehrer and the Language Log for a whole different take on why neuroscience is WAAAAAAY overblown at this point.

Which is not to say I will not continue to post new research. :)

Is this a neuro revolution?

Some say the increasing presence of neuroscience in our everyday lives has the potential to radically alter contemporary culture. But is it all just hype, or is this really a revolution in the making?

Erene Stergiopoulos

They say a revolution is brewing.

We won’t see it in the streets and people won’t be talking about it on the daily news. Instead, it will happen in dimly lit laboratories, where human subjects lie with their heads in white tubular machines. In fact, it’s happening right now — as figures in lab coats crowd around a computer monitor, watching smudges of colour populate the screen. They are observing what’s happening inside a living human brain.

Neuroscience, the study of how the brain works, has become one of the fastest-growing fields in science, and has managed to infiltrate even the most unlikely areas of knowledge. 10 years ago, there was no such thing as neuromarketing, neuroliterature, or neuropolitics — and yet today it seems every discipline is competing for the coveted “neuro” suffix to add to its resume.

The recent explosion of brain science across so many domains of knowledge has led to forecasts of an impending “neuro revolution.” Some even believe it has already begun.

Zack Lynch, author of The Neuro Revolution and co-founder of the neurotechnology market research firm, NeuroInsights, describes the neuro revolution as an upheaval of the social, economic, and political planes of our lives, leading to what he calls the neurosociety. He explains that these changes are driven by neurotechnology, the tools used to understand and influence the brain.

“My thought on the neurosociety is that it really begins this year, quite frankly,” says Lynch. “The neurosociety begins to emerge in 2010 and takes us through 2060.”

“What we’re already beginning to see,” adds Lynch, “is that neuroscience and neurotechnology are beginning to infiltrate multiple aspects of our daily lives.”

Take, for instance, the field of neuromarketing. In recent years, a whole host of companies have sprung up, promising their big-business clients — corporations like Google, Hyundai, and Microsoft — a window into the consumer’s psyche.

Neuromarketing is based on the principle that consumers don’t generally know why they make certain choices about products: we don’t know why we like what we do. So while focus groups might lead to a fraction of that answer, technologies that allow companies to see the brain’s physical response to advertising materials seem to offer an even deeper insight into the consumer’s subconscious needs and preferences — the ones that marketers target in order to sell a product.

It’s this rationale that neuromarketers have used to ply their wares, and so far, they haven’t been hard to sell. The website of neuromarketing company Mindlab International opens with a video intro of faceless crowds walking up and down the street: “Wouldn’t you like to know what’s going on in their minds?”

Yes, we would.

And how about neuroaesthetics, the field that studies our brain’s reactions to different works of art? Or neurotheology, the science of neural processes underlying our beliefs in god? What about neuroeconomics, neurowarfare, and neuropolitics? We’d like to know what’s going on in our minds there too.

Perhaps the most notable application of neuroscience has been in courts of law. The field of neurolaw is responsible for bringing brain imaging into the courtroom for applications like brain-based lie detection. By monitoring activity in the brain regions associated with memory, researchers believe they can detect whether the accused was involved in the crime if corresponding memory areas light up when he is shown the evidence. Because let’s face it — we’d really like to know what’s going on in the mind of the accused.

In a heavily publicized case in 2008, a court in India convicted a 24-year-old woman of murder, based on the results of a brain scan. While these methods may appear tried and true in scientific literature, it is still unclear whether the results translate outside a lab setting.

“fMRI-based lie detection, for example, can do as well as 80-90 per cent correct in simple laboratory simulations where college students commit mock crimes and then lie or tell the truth, as instructed,” says Martha Farah, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Center for Neuroscience and Society.

Read the whole article.