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Feb. 7th, 2006 12:51 pmBecause I'm into linguistics, my father often tells me about articles concerning behaviorism and cognition. And quite a few of them talk about "brain activity." Meaning, they plugged some nodes on a person's (or apes) head, and recorded what areas "fire up" given certain stimuli.
I usually have a problem with those kinds of studies, because most of the time they make outrageous claims that I don't think a little red spot on a map of the brain can explain.
For example, why does it never occur to "scientists" that the reason (adult) apes can't mimic as well as human children is because an ape probably doesn't give a damn about mimicking humans. He justs wants to get his food! If you could make an experiment testing to see how well apes mimic other apes and compare that with how human children mimic other humans, then maybe that's saying something.
And anyway, where are all these scans going to lead? Are we going to find the part of the brain that makes criminals? And are we going to condemn people who have then before they do anything? Or worse, lawyers will use it as an excuse for their client. "It's not his fault, your honor, it's just how his brain works."
I was reading another article that was saying these scans are very superficial. They can only sense the "mountains" of activity, and can't track the subtle links spreading throughout the brain. So what I guess I want to say is... Scientists! Stop thinking you are so cool with your stupid brain scans and coming to ridiculous conclusions about the way the brain works! Can't you consider occasionally that the outside biases of your experiment may be effecting the results?
I usually have a problem with those kinds of studies, because most of the time they make outrageous claims that I don't think a little red spot on a map of the brain can explain.
For example, why does it never occur to "scientists" that the reason (adult) apes can't mimic as well as human children is because an ape probably doesn't give a damn about mimicking humans. He justs wants to get his food! If you could make an experiment testing to see how well apes mimic other apes and compare that with how human children mimic other humans, then maybe that's saying something.
And anyway, where are all these scans going to lead? Are we going to find the part of the brain that makes criminals? And are we going to condemn people who have then before they do anything? Or worse, lawyers will use it as an excuse for their client. "It's not his fault, your honor, it's just how his brain works."
I was reading another article that was saying these scans are very superficial. They can only sense the "mountains" of activity, and can't track the subtle links spreading throughout the brain. So what I guess I want to say is... Scientists! Stop thinking you are so cool with your stupid brain scans and coming to ridiculous conclusions about the way the brain works! Can't you consider occasionally that the outside biases of your experiment may be effecting the results?
