Brain Imaging
What it Can (and Cannot) Tell Us About Consciousness
Description:... Features --Neuroimaging cannot tell us how neurons are supporting psychological mental processes. --The powerful empirical insights obtained by imaging methods are overshadowed by claims that they can identify abstract mental processes. --Overreaching claims about identifying abstract mental processes have persisted despite empirical failings. Magnetic resonance imaging methods have taken a commanding position in brain studies because they allow scientists to follow brain activities in the living human. The ability to measure cerebral anatomy, neuronal firing and brain metabolism has extended and re-invigorated hopes of understanding the role that brain activity plays in human life. The brain has assumed a central role in our thinking of the world that can be traced back to the philosophies that are expressed in psychology, religion, literature, and everyday life. Brain scientists, planning and measuring brain activities by imaging methods, have consciously or unconsciously been influenced by these philosophical views. This book, in describing the experiments using imaging methods, traces how assumptions about the nature of brain function made in planning scientific experiments are the consequences of philosophical positions. Experiments that relate brain activities to observable behavior are shown to avoid the philosophical and psychological assumptions about mental processes that have been proposed to underlie these behaviors. These promising, empirical experiments are consistent with the philosophy of Pragmatism which, in judging hypotheses about understanding by their consequences, has questioned the value of everyday conceptualizations of brain activity for imaging studies. Robert G. Shulman is the Sterling Professor (Emeritus) of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University, where he formed the Magnetic Resonance Center, taught Biochemistry, Biophysics and Literature, and was Director of the Division of Biological Sciences. Publisher's note.
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