March 18, 2005
More information about what happens in people's brains around the give-and-take of financial decisions, adding on to the earlier discussion, both courtesy of participants of the Adrants Network. This one is rougher and less ready, doesn't separate out relevant questions of sexual differences, correlation and caustion, definition of terms, more serious cavils. Rightly, today's Wall Street Journal says (subscription, thus we quote liberally here), regarding this spate of studies, "user beware." Beware the "the illusion of explanatory depth," in the words of Frank Keil, a Yale University psychology professor.
It seems more and more evident that emotional and conceptual activity activates the brain in sophisticated and multivalent terms, and indeed the entire body-mind, in distinguishable and vivid fashion, and over time may well even shift neural structure and function. In the long term, As A Man Thinks, So Is He would not be a surprise to our accumulated common sense stretching back to the ancestors. In fact, the brain seems to treat thoughts as things:
Sometimes, to be sure, finding "where" solves a longstanding mystery. These have been among neuroimaging's greatest hits. For instance, brain scans show that when people conjure up a mental image (picture a giraffe), the same neuronal apparatus in the visual circuits becomes active as when you see a giraffe in the flesh. There had long been a debate over whether seeing in the mind's eye is really seeing; it is.
Psychology has been slower than some of the more practically-oriented advisory methods to capitalize on this universal access to the entire reality, "one little room, an everywhere," available in full to intention and focus. We remember, somewhere, a haunting anecdote of a Chinese emperor who comforted his homesick armies: "How can they be far when you can think of them?"
The Big Topic at Good&Happy is the connection of virtue to the many components of happiness, so we wonder whether and when there may be studies tracking virtuous activity, varieties of motives, self-control or intentional inhibition, in general the practices thought to form or define virtue. A huge world of inquiry lies ahead. Many students of the matter seem dazzled by the blinking lights in the brain, having concluded that the phenomenon explains itself, a recurring misunderstanding based not in science, but in scientism, faith-based materialism masquerading as intellectual honesty.
When Broca's brain lights up, it may mean no more than that the subject is engaging his language skills, a phenomenon sometimes equally evident if you just listen. When the amygdala chatters to the PET and fMRI neuroimaging apparatus, it may be no more esoteric than the red face of rage.
The only use of the science so far is descriptive, including describing the chemistry and electricity of inner states that were hitherto private. Nothing so far is really explanatory. The intrigue arises in making connections, measuring the response to images, matching an image that we know arouses in a certain fashion, with other images' arousal patterns. Usually to sell. Perhaps later, to control. Perhaps soon after that, to refashion. Already, we believe we can categorize neural strategies of amateurs and experts:
a chess grandmaster activates the region of the brain that stores memories, such as those of games he has played or studied. But in the brain of a neophyte the activity is over here, in a region that analyzes positions from scratch.
Beware, says Sharon Begley in the WSJ Science Journal, "the enchantment of the cognitive paparazzi." So far they are only one degree of technical proficiency removed from Restoration Drama's eavesdroppers behind the curtain. And may have mischief in mind. Measureable, perhaps, in their own excited amygdalas.
The explanations for such excitement must however be found elsewhere.
That's a useful reflection - thanks.
Posted by: Michael Tinkler | March 28, 2005 at 09:15 AM