Critical Science

http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2008/06/mri_what_is_it_good_for.php

We are being constantly bombarded with news stories containing pretty pictures of the brain, with headings such as “Brain’s adventure centre located“. Journalists now seem to refer routinely to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as “mind reading”, and exaggerated claims about its powers abound, as do misleading, irresponsible and downright ridiculous stories about the technology.

Take, for example, this article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Atlantic:

The preliminary findings began to arrive a few days later, in a series of e-mails…”Carter: big amygdala response on both sides! Jeff, do you fear this guy?” Fear might not be the most accurate term, but I worry about him a great deal. I’d recently given his book on Israel a negative review in The Washington Post. Score one for the fMRI.

Yes, the amygdala is involved in encoding fearful memories, but it is also involved in many other emotional responses, any of which could cause an increase in activity there. Yet for Goldberg, a colourful blob on the amygdala must mean he must be scared, or at least apprehensive of, Carter, when in fact this is not necessarily the case.

fMRI is not mind reading, and never will be. The closest that researchers have got to reading minds is the accurate prediction of which of several visual stimuli is being viewed by a subject. This can be done by focusing on the activity in two discrete regions of the brain. For example, activity in the fusiform face area is known to increase when a face is being viewed, while increased activity in the parahippocampal gyrus is associated with the viewing of images of places, so this kind of prediction can be made by monitoring the relative activity in those areas.

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