therapy
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What are the limits of neuroscience?
[My answer to a recent Quora question.] There are two major problems with neuroscience: Weak philosophical foundations when dealing with mental concepts Questionable statistical analyses of experimental results 1. Neuroscience needs a bit of philosophy Many neuroscientific results are presented without sufficiently nuanced philosophical knowledge. This can lead to cartoonish and potentially harmful conceptions of…
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Is neuroscience really ruining the humanities?
For my latest 3QD post, I expanded on my answer to a Quora question: Is neuroscience ruining the humanities? Here’s an excerpt: “Neuroscience is ruining the humanities”. This was the provocative title of a recent article by Arthur Krystal in The Chronicle of Higher Education. To me the question was pure clickbait [1], since I…
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How to navigate on Planet Brain
I was asked the following question on Quora: “How do you most easily memorize Brodmann’s areas?”. The question details added the following comment: “Brodmann area 7 is honestly where the numbering starts to seem really arbitrary.” Here’s how I responded: Yup. The Brodmann numbering system for cortical areas is arbitrary. If you find a mnemonic, do…
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Why we can’t anticipate what future science will look like
I was asked the following question on Quora: What kind of information do we need to discover everything about memory in the brain and its mechanism? I took the opportunity to recapitulate an excellent point made by Paul Feyerabend in his book Against Method, which I am currently reading. Here’s my answer: We’ll need to…
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Science: The Quest for Symmetry
My latest 3QD post is up. This time I’m talking about symmetry and its relationship with science. Here’s a snippet: Attitudes toward science in the public sphere occupy an interesting spectrum. At one extreme there are the cheerleaders — those who seem to think that science is the disembodied spirit of progress itself, and will usher…
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Does dopamine produce a feeling of bliss? On the chemical self, the social self, and reductionism.
Here’s the intro to my latest blog post at 3 Quarks Daily. “The osmosis of neuroscience into popular culture is neatly symbolized by a phenomenon I recently chanced upon: neurochemical-inspired jewellery. It appears there is a market for silvery pendants shaped like molecules of dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, norepinephrine and other celebrity neurotransmitters. Under pictures of…