I once gave a (perfectly awful) cognitive science lecture at a major centre for brain imaging research. The main project there, as best I could tell, was to provide subjects with some or other experimental tasks to do and take pictures of their brains while they did them. The lecture was followed by the usual mildly boozy dinner, over which professional inhibitions relaxed a bit. I kept asking, as politely as I could manage, how the neuroscientists decided which experimental tasks it would be interesting to make brain maps for. I kept getting the impression that they didn’t much care. Their idea was apparently that experimental data are, ipso facto, a good thing; and that experimental data about when and where the brain lights up are, ipso facto, a better thing than most. I guess I must have been unsubtle in pressing my question because, at a pause in the conversation, one of my hosts rounded on me. ‘You think we’re wasting our time, don’t you?’ he asked. I admit, I didn’t know quite what to say. I’ve been wondering about it ever since.
See also:
Grill-Spector, K., & Weiner, K. S. (2014). The functional architecture of the ventral temporal cortex and its role in categorization. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15(8), 536-548.
ABSTRACT: Visual categorization is thought to occur in the human ventral temporal cortex (VTC), but how this categorization is achieved is still largely unknown. In this Review, we consider the computations and representations that are necessary for categorization and examine how the microanatomical and macroanatomical layout of the VTC might optimize them to achieve rapid and flexible visual categorization. We propose that efficient categorization is achieved by organizing representations in a nested spatial hierarchy in the VTC. This spatial hierarchy serves as a neural infrastructure for the representational hierarchy of visual information in the VTC and thereby enables flexible access to category information at several levels of abstraction.
I normally bristle whenever anyone insinuates that neuroscience, full stop, is useless to studying cognition. Fodor's quirky writing style made it hard to bristle as I began reading, but I kept my guard up. He begins by differentiating relevant questions (are functions localized; where are the very important pieces of the brain localized so that we may avoid cutting them out) from irrelevant questions (where exactly is each function localized, beyond the import of the clinic) – and then proceeds to tear apart the rest of the neuroimaging practice. His destruction being so limited, and myself being something of a sceptic when it comes to certain domains of scientific research, I may even put forward a cautious agreement with Fodor's main claim - namely, that people are far too obsessed with the precise location of precise brain functions. However, are we really to accept the argument that nothing important could come of knowing the precise localization of every function in the brain? Were we coming up on T4-equivalent machines, surely having a precise map would help us along the way, enabling us to build a faithful reconstruction of the brain. Even if we never found the need (or ability) to go all-in for T4, as I mentioned in my last comment – our goal appears to be reverse-engineering human cognition, and one such way is, well, to know how to reverse-engineer human cognition. In general, though, I find it hard to decisively refute or agree with Fodor, since his distinction between "useful" and "useless" is quite fuzzy, and can easily be amended post-hoc if something useful comes out of, for example, our discovery that the same network lights up for thinking of teapots and naps (could it be that tea is inherently related to sleepiness? what scandal!) But I did thoroughly enjoy his writing.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to add that often, the simple "big brush important points" are a lot less obvious than it would first seem, and that we therefore often need to study things in what would seem to be an inordinate amount of detail before elucidating what the precise role of each brain area is (e.g. the diverse alexias/agrammaticas/anopsias)
DeleteYes, Fodor is glib. And better at finding fault than finding answers. But here he's right that finding out when and where things happen in the brain does not tell you how or why they do what they do to make us able to do what we can do.
DeleteYes, T4 has to explain more than T3, and the extra anatomical, physiological and pharmacological detail of T4 can only come from neuroscience. But T4 has to also include T3. And it's not clear how the anatomical, physiological and pharmacological details can do that. Remember that even T5 includes T3, and a T5 clone can pass T3 too. But with a clone we know nothing about the causal mechanism at all.
The need for the neural details in clinical neurology is uncontested. It's reverse-engineering cognitive capacity that is at issue.
I believe Fodor was partially right in his letter about the status of neuroscience and cognition. That we have so much new technology at our disposal but the trouble now is, what kind of questions should we ask? What are the RIGHT questions to ask concerning the brain?
ReplyDeleteI must say, I am not a big fan of neuroimaging. When reading papers on fMRIs and functional localization, I become quite skeptical at the conclusions the authors draw. Yes, we have discovered a correlation but so what? I want to understand the causation. A fMRI psychology paper (link below) concluded that the brain structures of Democrats and Republicans differed and that Republicans showed more activity in the amygdala when making risky decisions. I cringe at these types of studies and the conclusions the media will quickly jump on (Republicans are more emotional decision makers!). But this is not to say that ALL neuroimaging studies on functional localization are useless. Back to my previous point: we have the right tools but we need to ask the right questions.
Research using neuroimaging can elucidate the neural circuitry and mechanisms behind certain actions. As Fodor mentioned, "if you're a surgeon you may well wish to know which ones they are, since you will wish to avoid cutting them out." Certainly it is important to map out what each area is necessary for, especially in the context of neurosurgery. It may also be of important to understand how brain circuitries work so we can better understand what happens in the diseases of the brain. But in psychiatry, for example, using neuroimaging has not yielded significant results so far--so why are we still pursuing it in this field?
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/republican-democrat-brain-politics-fmri-study_n_2717731.html).
Neural data are undoubtedly important for clinical neurology; they have already begun to be relevant to psychiatry, less via anatomy than via pharmacology. But for reverse engineering cognitive capacity they have not yet helped. In fact, they are waiting for help from cognitive science, to learn what kinds of mechanisms to try to localize.
DeleteThen in a way, I feel like it's hit a dead end: neuroimaging waiting for cognitive science to tell it what to do and cognitive science waiting for neuroimaging to discover something.
DeleteThere's no "scientific method": It's down to clever people figuring out how things work. Maybe neural imagery or correlates will give someone a happy hunch. After all, it's even worked with tea leaves...
DeleteMaybe, but it all comes down to how it is interpreted. If not down with enough caution, the conclusions drawn could be very misleading. I think we have to be very skeptical when it comes to neuroimaging, otherwise it will just be phrenology again with new fancy technology.
DeleteI agree with Fodor's annoyance when reading sexy headlines made by journalists which claim “we've found where ____ occurs in the brain”. But unlike Fodor, I think the blame for this misunderstanding of results can be spread beyond the neuroscientists themselves. Science journalism needs more rigorous standards, for one. And more importantly, there needs to be a way to get the public interested in the science and philosophy, otherwise journalists will keep supplying what the public demands, namely sensationalism and bold claims.
ReplyDeleteI do think he somewhat trivializes the issue to fit his narrative that there’s no seemingly good reason to care about localization in the brain. For example...
"It belongs to understanding how the engine in your auto works that the functioning of its carburettor is to aerate the petrol; that’s part of the story about how the engine’s parts contribute to its running right. But why (unless you’re thinking of having it taken out) does it matter where in the engine the carburettor is? What part of how your engine works have you failed to understand if you don’t know that?"
Brain scientists aren't even sure what the physical mechanisms that contribute to brain functions might be, so the analogy is poorly formulated. They’re not even aware whether or not there is a carburettor, let alone where it is located. If there are different mechanisms and/or physical components that can actually be delineated, the first step to finding them is poking the black box in different places to see how the performance might be affected.
"To put the same point the other way around: what if, as it turns out, nobody ever does find a brain region that’s specific to thinking about teapots or to taking a nap?"
I hope and I think that’s not the point for most brain scientists. As far as I’m aware, finding a neural correlate is meaningless to understanding without relating it to other neural correlates. It’s the relations that give any meaning to the results.
“As far as I can see, it’s reasonable to hold that brain studies are methodologically privileged with respect to other ways of finding out about the mind only if you are likewise prepared to hold that facts about the brain are metaphysically privileged with respect to facts about the mind; and you can hold that only if you think the brain and the mind are essentially different kinds of thing.”
A neural correlate by definition doesn't privilege the brain over the mind, since it’s a correlation between the two.
Having said that, I admit he makes a compelling case as to the relative importance of brain imaging when considering issues of financial allocation. Results when misinterpreted by laymen journalists make for attention grabbing headlines, but how much are we really learning from fMRI studies? From my own reading of brain anatomy and function studies, it seems like studies of patients with lesions or WADA testing seem to provide much more conclusive evidence than brain imaging in normal humans. A case can be made about the import of neuroimaging relative to other techniques, but I find it rather ironic and disappointing that Fodor seems to be purposely dumbing down his own interpretation of neuroimaging results to the level of the journalism he’s criticizing to drive his point home.
With cars, the location of the carburetor is useful to the mechanic repairing it, but with cars we already know the forward engineering. So we already know the causal mechanism that generates the car's capacity to do what it can do. With the brain, we don't. And it's not clear that localizing where and when things happen in the brain will tell us. With the heart or the lungs it could, because what they do (push blood or air) is observable too, and that's all there is to it. But the brain does everything we can do.
DeleteThe relevance of neural data for clinical purposes is uncontested. It's not clear that the methods of "deep" neuroscience (single electrode recording and simulation, lesions, pharmacology, even neurogenetics) can tell us more about cognitive capacity (as opposed to just correlates of cognitive capacity) than imaging.
At least imaging doesn't hurt animals. If anyone went to see the Hebb lecture yesterday by David Redish on "The Cognitive Rat," it was all just correlations and mind-reading too, but it hurt a lot of innocent rats for the exercise. I don't know if it has any clinical applications, but as cognitive science it was no more informative than the usual imaging study on humans.
I have to admit, when it comes to the question of animal testing for the sake of simply curiosity, what we're doing seems rather perverse. I think finding correlations between behaviors and the underlying physical instantiations are always some kind of clue (it is information after all)... but at what expense? The ethics of it all is rather complex to decipher, but I'd rather be on the safe side and avoid uselessly hurting feeling creatures. We know for sure rats feel pain, but we have no idea whether the information we are collecting will help us improve another feeling creature's well-being. Of course, it's not that simple, since much of what we discover through sheer curiosity might have an application to improving our well-being.
DeleteI'm not fond of the absolutist argument claiming that knowing where and when something occurs has no relation to how and why something occurs... but my ethical inclinations do trump my curiosity in the end.
Fodor is worried about how popular brain studies are at the moment. He’s noticed that there is an awful lot of buzz neuroimaging research, specifically research that tells us which parts of our brain are activated when we do (or don’t do) certain things. And while he thinks this research is important for neurosurgeons (so they don’t accidentally cut a really important bit during neurosurgery), he can’t figure out why any of this stuff is helpful for scientists grappling with how the mind works. Who cares if the left frontal lobe is activated when we use verbs? Does that really help explain anything about language?
ReplyDeleteFodor suggests that people who care this much about brain research must be dualists, ie they must think the mind is different from the brain. He writes: “… it’s reasonable to hold that brain studies are methodologically privileged with respect to other ways of finding out about the mind only if you are likewise prepared to hold that facts about the brain are metaphysically privileged with respect to facts about the mind; and you can hold that only if you think that the brain and the mind are essentially two different kinds of thing.” This surprised me and I found his argument here difficult to understand. Surely, you only care this much about the brain if you think the mind is the brain (aka if you are a materialist). If you are a materialist, the only way to learn about the mind is to learn about the brain! Or so I thought.
Fodor thinks otherwise. He gives the following example to help explain: suppose we find that no specific brain region corresponds to thinking about teapots. Would this be evidence that we don’t think about teapots? Obviously not. I guess Fodor’s point is this (though I admit I am not sure): we only care about finding a brain region that maps to thinking about teapots if we think the mind is different from the brain. If we think they are the same thing, we couldn’t care less about finding which brain region maps to teapots. We know we think about teapots, so we don’t need to look for the teapot region in the brain!
Of course Fodor's stuff about neuroscience, metaphysics and dualism was just tendentious nonsense. But he's right that finding out where and when things happen in the brain won't tell you how or why they generate cognitive capacity. (And mirror neurons are as good an example as neuroimagery.)
DeleteAs I mentioned in my comment on the previous article (4a), I believe that there can be some benefits from neuroimaging. For example, when surgeons are operating on epileptic patients and must lesion the brain to prevent further seizures, information on the localized functions of the brain can help limit the loss of function by helping these surgeons avoid specific areas. That being said, this article highlights concerns regarding the connection between studying neuroscience and cognition.
ReplyDeleteIn this reading, Fodor states that “experimental data about when and where the brain lights up are, ipso facto, a better thing than most”. This quote has helped me realize that perhaps, some experiments are redundant in that they tell us something that we already know. For example, we know that we have the capability to imitate another person’s actions, so what is the point of knowing where this capacity is localized in the brain? Does knowing where and when the brain will light up in response to certain stimuli help us understand how the brain does what it does? Perhaps some of the motivation behind these experiments is in producing and showing the data, rather than knowing the data itself.
Lesion studies on animals (such as monkeys or rats) can confirm our suspicions about the function of certain brain areas. But, once again, how does confirming that a certain part of the brain does a certain thing help us understand cognition? We now know what that part of the brain does and when it will do what it does, but I do not believe that we are any closer in understanding how it does what it does.
On a side note, I have heard the argument of why scientists perform lesion studies on animals as opposed to studying humans who have damaged equivalent parts of their brain through strokes, injury, etc.: these lesion studies allow scientists to target specific brain structures (e.g. the left medial temporal lobe ONLY) where as humans with brain damage usually have multiple structures that are impaired (a stroke can affect large areas of the brain). Thus, the symptoms of the humans cannot always be attributed to a single brain structure/area, but it is easier to do so with animals that have a specific part of their brain lesioned. But to reiterate my point, I believe that finding localized functions of the brain simply tells us what each structure is capable of doing and does not bring us closer to understanding how the brain does what it does.
I don't know about how many human lives are saved or how much human suffering is decreased in clinical neurology by animal lesion studies (though I'll bet it's a lot less than researchers claim in their funding proposals). But this course is about cognitive science and the reverse-engineering of cognitive capacity. There I can confidently say that animal studies tell us as little as human brain imaging studies do (but at least with the latter no one is hurt).
Delete
ReplyDeleteBefore I say anything in regards to Fodor’s article I want to admit that I am a dualist; and after almost 4 years of taking psychology courses that do not agree with dualist thinking I am still a dualist. Much like Fodor I have yet to be convinced that knowing the material processes of the brain are the answer to figuring out what makes cognition cognition. For the neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, knowing approximately where our childhood memories are stored can have some merit but to somehow use this kind of information to answer our cognition question is when I get lost. Function is not cognition, neither is localization of function. I can generally accept the premise that there is some relationship between brain and cognition but I think the idea of an empirical or functional explanation of cognition leaves questions unanswered. If our brains were the only source for cognition, I would imagine humans to have a lot less variety in our cognitive abilities and output. If we could localize cognition in the brain, wouldn’t we be able to come up with brain modification techniques that would optimize cognition? Let’s think about depression for a moment; if neuroimaging studies can identify the function-location of depression (which there are many studies that have done so) why is there still no function-location based fix for this mental disorder? There is something more to depression (and other cognitive processes) than their location in the brain, there is something more than a neurochemical imbalance to the disorder as well otherwise antidepressants would be curative instead of therapeutic. This being said, I think it would be foolish to totally discount the brain and neuroscience as part of the answer. Thinking about lobotomies, when the brain was mutilated by this procedure there was an observable difference in cognitive processes. Essentially, there was a difference in cognition after changes were made to the brain and this is also why brain surgeries can be so risky. There is obviously a connection between the brain and cognition but I don’t think that localization studies are the way to unearth what this connection is.
The fact that there is not yet a solution to the "hard problem" -- explaining how and why we feel, rather than just do -- or even that it is insoluble does not mean dualism (what it means) is true. It just means that although it's almost certain that the brain causes feeling, we can't explain how or why.
DeleteDifferences between people certainly do not imply that the brain is not the cause; it just means that brains (like bodies) have different inborn features, and are shaped by different external experiences.
But the fact that localization is not an explanation does not imply that nothing is an explanation -- at least insofar as the brain's capacity to do -- T2-T4 -- is concerned. But that's the "easy" problem.
“If there’s a place in the brain where you find a whole lot of neurons going off when and only when whoever owns the brain is thinking about teapots, it’s at least plausible, all else being equal, that you’ve found where in that brain its thinking about teapots happens” (Fodor, 1999).
ReplyDeleteThere is one thing I agree with Fodor: neuroimaging has created an impressive band-wagon phenomenon. I read one study that demonstrated that lay-people (and even psychology students) were more likely to believe in a fact, if said-fact was accompanied by neuroscience jargon. People are “gaga” for the brain. I also agree that the growth of neuroscience has been made to the expense of other valuable domains of psychology, like social psychology.
However, it is obvious that Fodor is not a neuroscientist, because he resorted to gross generalizations regarding imaging studies. Researchers know that one area of the brain may be responsible for an astonishingly-high number of various functions. There are no such things as “brain regions that are responsible for teapots”. The one exception (that I am aware of) are the neurons in the fusiform gyrus, which may respond to a very specific visual stimuli. Other than that, I highly doubt that researchers would be looking for a one-to-one correspondence in the brain.
Fodor even suffered from the classical hindsight bias with his Little Black Girl in Search of God example. We cannot take evidence for granted if it has not been proved empirically. Besides, Pavlov’s experience was far more complex than just “to show that expecting food makes them salivate”. So yes, some facts may seem obvious, but empirical facts may be needed to push the understanding further.
I do seem to understand Fodor’s argument that brain imaging is not the answer to reverse-engineer cognition; although neuroimaging will tell you which region is activated following X action, it does not tell anything regarding HOW the brain does what it does.
I believe cognitive scientists provide valuable insights on reverse-engineering cognition. But Fodor didn’t need to criticize neuroscience to prove that.
I agree with you that looking for an area specific for teapots would be absurd and Fodor uses this argument to reject research based on localization. But I think the problem is to clearly define what we are looking for in the brain (what is the thing for which we want to find a location). Of course, there is no area for teapots but there is probably an area for working memory. Then if a researcher sees that this area is activated two different behaviors, he gains insight on how these two behaviors are performed: they require working memory. Then it is probably useful to search for areas where resources are stored (vs.teapots or brain areas that respond to perception of specific objects).
DeleteAlong the same tangent as Jocelyn Wu…
ReplyDelete“It’s natural enough to infer from a reliable correlation between a mental process and a locus of neural activity that the latter is the site of the former.”
Fodor (1999) reminds us that a brain localisation is correlated with a mental process, and that this in no way explains any kind of causality. This is something which I believe the article by Rizzolatti and Craighero seems to neglect at some points. For example, when studying mirror-neurons through imaging technology they mention that: “There are no studies in which single neurons were recorded from the putative mirror-neuron area in humans. Thus, direct evidence for the existence of mirror-neurons in humans is lacking. There is, however, a rich amount of data proving, indirectly, that a mirror-neuron system does exist in humans.” In this way they are trying to track their theories (that of mirror-neurons) within the data they collect. Furthermore causality is attributed to localised areas of mirror-neurons playing a role in things such as imitation learning, speech, and the like. Fodor mentions that “there is no good reason to think that similarity of psychological functions generally predicts similarity of brain locations or vice versa”. In this sense, although we may find correlational areas which seem to have increase in activity I think, as Fedor mentions, it is very important to understand that mental processes may perhaps arise from a much larger picture than what localisation is presenting.
Fodor admits: “I want, to begin with, to distinguish between the question whether mental functions are neurally localised in the brain, and the question where they are neurally localised in the brain. Though I find it hard to care about the second, the first clearly connects with deep issues about how the mind works; ones that even us philosophers have heard of.”
That latter comment of where mental functions are neurally localised is hard to care about, I might however disagree. Although he is right that localisation isn’t a complete picture, I don’t think localisation is a complete waste of time. Something that is coming to prove this is deep brain stimulation (DBS). This acts as a pacemaker within the brain to help people with psychological illnesses who are in very bad shape and where multiple treatments they’ve gone through haven’t helped. DBS has been used with people with parkinson’s, depression, anorexia, etc. Without brain localisation this type of treatment wouldn’t be possible. Although this does not help explain how cognition works, it does show that there is some sort of a pathway which needs to be electrically connected in order to produce a different state within the individual.
Fodor already agreed on clinical research; his point is only about cognitive research.
DeleteFodor criticizes neuroscientific research concerned with localisation of function. Typically, such a research program consists in studying a function by having subjects carry out some task exploiting that function as well as control tasks, all the while having their brain activity mapped out by a relevant method (e.g. PET, fMRI, EEG, etc.). If a part of the brain shows increased activity in the experimental task but not in the control tasks, then this part is inferred as the place involved in carrying out that task.
ReplyDeleteFodor acknowledges that whether function is localised or heavily distributed can inform our theories about how the brain works, but he argues that knowing exactly where is irrelevant, and that spending resources on localizing one function after the other is consequently a waste.
I agree with the spirit of Fodor’s criticism, but I still do not think it captures the extent to which such research is problematic. The impetus for and consequence of a lot of research using neuroimaging to localize function is actually a logical fallacy: reverse inference. By identifying a part of the brain with a function (if X then part Y of the brain lights up), we are mislead, thanks to a bit of cognitive heuristic, to infer that the activity of that part entails that the function is occuring (part Y is lit up, therefore X). Fodor’s criticism fails to recognize that the ideal of neuroimaging is to achieve a sort of brain reading, where we could infer from brain activity what is really going on in the subject’s mind. Without reverse inference, the predictive power of neuroimaging research is reduced to predicting what part of the brain will light up under some circumstance; surely, nobody cares about that.
Actually, I think Fodor is not vehement enough in his criticism of careless neuroimaging research. Indeed, such research may not only be wasteful but also positively detrimental. This article describes some of the ways in which fMRI-assisted research is misinterpreted in the media and the rest of the population, and how this affects our concept of ourselves, and even our policies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1524852/
It's not at all clear that even if neuro-imaging could be used for mind-reading and even mind-control, that it would explain how the brain generates our T3 capacities.
Delete“If the mind happens in space at all, it happens somewhere north of the neck. What exactly turns on knowing how far north?”
ReplyDeleteThis line of thinking undermines the basic motivation driving science. It is enough to want to know something because we want to know it. This type of curiosity helps a child learn about the world around them, especially the relationships between events—think of the phase children go through where their reply to every answer provided is “why?”. This curiosity is also deeply rooted in science, from long before we identified science as a discipline of learning. I understand that the limited amount of funding for scientific research has created an environment where researchers must justify their work beyond simple curiosity, but that does not mean that curiosity is not sufficient. Fodor is not arguing that brain mapping and neuroimaging is less important than X, a specific alternative branch of research, but that brain mapping is not important period. Nothing may turn on knowing how far north the mind is, but if someone wants to know the answer, then it becomes an answer worth knowing.
Curiosity, yes. But curiosity about what? About where things happen in my brain when I do something? Well, yes, we have a lot of that kind of curiosity. The question is whether we learn anything more from it than the correlation (and location). (Don't mix it up with the clinical usefulness of localization, which Fodor concedes.)
Delete“It belongs to understanding how the engine in your auto works that the functioning of its carburettor is to aerate the petrol; that’s part of the story about how the engine’s parts contribute to its running right. But why (unless you’re thinking of having it taken out) does it matter where in the engine the carburettor is? What part of how your engine works have you failed to understand if you don’t know that?”
ReplyDeleteThis analogy misses the point of neuroimaging studies. Steven Rose from Open University comments that “we need...dismiss the idea that because a particular brain region is active when...we think about teapots, this means we have located a teapot storage site in the brain. All we have done is found part of a system enabling us to think teapots.” Fodor seems to miss this important nuance. The physical location of the carburettor in an engine does not matter, but its relationship to other parts of the engine does, in order to understand the function of the carburrettor, and the function of the engine whole. The issue is that we do not understand how the brain works at all, at least with respect to the mind, since the physiological mechanisms, such as action potentials, are better understood. Given that we do not understand how the brain cognizes, then understanding what part of the brain is involved in a type of cognizing task is useful in the potential functioning of the system. Fodor accepts that understanding how the engine’s parts contribute to it’s running right. Well, the brain is the engine, and the various structures and pathways of the brain are its parts. We need to understand the parts to understand the overarching system, and neuroimaging techniques provide some insight on the function of the various sub-systems.
Yes, but what the brain can do is rather more than what a car (or a heart or lungs) can do. It can do anything and everything we can do. It's not clear that localizing the internal structure of activity correlated with that helps explain how the brain does it.
DeleteFodor’s writing style is full of compelling sarcasm, pretty much undermining anything neuroscientists do, and throwing out the window much of the research we study.
ReplyDeleteIf I do agree the obsession with brain function localization to be rather pointless at times considering that I take the position that there is nothing simple about the brain and that if we are ever going to be able to explain anything about the brain it will involve networks, (many many many networks), this does not indicate that neuroscience is irrelevant to explaining cognition. Knowing about the brain’s reward system is helpful at explaining patterns of behavior or why cocaine is so addictive and it tells us about the role of dopamine, and possible ways of treating disorders at this level.
In a class last semester we read a book by Stuart Firestein called “Ignorance” and there he presented a perspective I wish I’d had at the beginning of my studies. He pointed out that if anything science has gotten wrong is thinking it will ever get all the answers, and that we have to realize that the only thing we will be forever discovering are questions, and questions and more questions, and that nurturing this type of ignorance is important. Particularly he writes that “the single biggest problem with understanding the brain is having one” ( p.125) which is why it is so hard to figure out how it is that we are able to do what we do, he remarks that the idea that “science is entirely an accumulation of facts”(18) is an abused idea and furthermore when talking about finding explanations he says that “[e]xplanation rather than ignorance is the hallmark of intellectual narrowness” (p.167). Fodor I believe would agree with Firestein on that (“maybe we are heavily invested in finding answers to which we don’t have the corresponding questions”), but there is a big leap between whether we are asking the good questions and thinking that we are just wasting our time, what shall we invest our time on then? And who is out there to determine its worthiness?
But it still seems true that where does not explain how...
DeleteCan't we just accept that that's the end of the story, and simply take it that knowing some stuff about where might be/prove valuable?
Delete"It appears that recent technological developments in ‘neural imaging’ have made it possible to measure the amount of activity that’s going on in a given brain region while a subject is engaged in some experimental task. [...] And, no doubt, if you’re a surgeon you may well wish to know which ones they are, since you will wish to avoid cutting them out. But whereas, historically, studies of the localization of brain functions have often been clinically motivated, I take it to be currently the consensus that they have significant scientific import over and above their implications for medical practice. "
ReplyDeletemany parts of this article resonated with me. and although i do find it interesting that we're beginning to know when to expect activation in area X rather than Y of the brain, I am never really surprised that the pattern of responses differ (often significantly) from what was expected (either in their time-course, location, strength…) based on previous studies. This does suggest to me that perhaps we're not yet at a point at which it is worth investing so much in neuro research, though I stand to be proven wrong.
“I kept asking, as politely as I could manage, how the neuroscientists decided which experimental tasks it would be interesting to make brain maps for. I kept getting the impression that they didn’t much care.” – Fodor
ReplyDeleteFodor’s critique emphasizes the difference between “the basis of cognition when it depends on a subtle interplay among brain regions” and the localization of semantics, such as the idea of a teapot, in specific parts of the brain, and argues that this is the difference between a scientist with a hypothesis versus one with a camera. I would argue, however, that a ‘camera’ is quite necessary in order to discover the interplay amongst brain regions, regardless of whether they become correlated with the performance of a cognitive task. A concise mapping of the anatomical connectivity of the brain might say something about its functional capacities. As we have noticed through cross species comparison, certain semi-discrete structures, such as the cerebellum for example, maintains vastly similar connectivity between mammals, and even between vertebrates and non-vertebrates. More so, from an evolutionary perspective, this anatomical design is selected for in order to provide advantages in the form of motor learning and coordination through the environment; an ability shared amongst a variety of species.
This is only meant to highlight that once the anatomical connectivity is found, it may be used as an important reference for inference when one finally does decide to test cognitive capacities. For example, if one tries to mechanise cognition using computer models, it might be worthwhile for them to avoid implementing algorithmic categorizing, and planning behaviors directly on visual input to the retina, as opposed to implementing them on holistic visual precepts that have already been further processed to become spatially and temporally coordinated with the environment. The functional connectivity of the brain, determined using functional brain imaging equipment, is in itself a model, which, in this instance, teaches us that multiple processing steps are required to reverse engineer the visual capacities of the brain. Although the brain might not be necessary to reverse engineer T3, the brain’s anatomical connections may give insight as to the steps required to do so.
Can you describe through a specific example of where brain anatomy or physiology has shown us how it generates a (nontrivial) behavioral capacity?
DeleteThere are two points in Fodor’s article that I want to comment on: first, the public appeal of brain images that are deceivingly easy to understand and second, the analogy of the brain as an engine whose parts we prefer to locate than to understand mechanistically.
ReplyDeleteOn the first point, I wholeheartedly agree that neuroscience is – to an almost frustrating degree – trendy. As a result of the general public’s interest in talking about the brain, emotions, intelligence and memory, research data that is convoluted and usually inconsistent, is oversimplified. The dissemination of neuroscience knowledge has reduced information to chitter chatter, and consequently misconstrued many ideas that are in reality elaborate. So Fodor’s criticism, though sharp, seems misdirected. For I have many doubts that any researcher should every simplify their research to the degree that a NY Times article does, nor would they ever suggest that functions are localized as straightforwardly as fMRI images imply. Instead, it is the error of journalists who seek to appeal to a wide public, who reduce complex and nuanced results, therefore misleading non-neuroscientists.
On the second point, Fodor criticizes the exploration of the location of various structures, saying that there is little to learn about how something works from where it is located. It is true that form and function are closely intertwined and so I do not think that exploring brain anatomy is futile. Yet perhaps Fodor is implying that we cannot completely focus research on the structures of the brain (the parts of the engine) if we do not have a clear outline of what the engine does as a whole. We must establish a clearer paradigm for what the brain is, the mind is, whether they are the same, if not, how they are related, in order to examine the parts.
I suppose it is a question between working from the inside, out (from small to big), or from big to small – slowly zooming in. Maybe it does not matter – for as Stuart Firestein says, “science is like searching for a black cat in a dark room”.
Fodor makes excellent points regarding neuroscientific research, but takes his conclusions too far in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteHe admits that localization studies are useful for clinical reasons, but not for much else, therefore we shouldn't invest so many resources and energy into it. I agree with the general sentiment, that localization studies have not been very useful, but disagree with his conclusion. I think in the future, once the technology improves, and we know precisely which neurons are causally related with which mental processes, we will come closer to explaining cognition. It absolutely may be a while before we reach this point, and of course the possibility remains that we may never reach it.
On a final point, I disagree that research funding is a zero-sum game, which he seems to claim.
("But science is different. Science is expensive, and it’s largely publicly funded, and there’s never enough money to do all the research that might be worth doing. In particular, brain imaging is expensive compared to other ways of trying to find out about the mind. If you put your money (which is to say: our money) into the elaborate technology required to establish neural localisations of mental functions by imaging techniques, you almost certainly take it out of other kinds of psychological research. Likewise in respect of the time and money that is required to train people to do the science; graduate students, too, are a limited resource.")
There is nothing which prevents substantially greater investment in all sciences - something like this simply depends on societal and cultural properties. If we were too value science more, we would find more money for it (which would clearly be a good idea).
“Brain scientists are supposed to be materialists, and materialists are supposed not to doubt that distinct mental states have ipso facto got different neural counterparts. That being so, why does it matter where in the brain their different counterparts are?” (Fodor, 1999).
ReplyDeleteFodor is right in saying that there is definitely an excessive hype for the use of neural imaging to locate brain areas associated with differing mental states in the psychological research community, and this is also reflected in the dramatic increase in published research using neural imaging techniques. Additionally, data produced by these studies often appear to be easily interpreted by the general public so the media picks them up. As a result, granting agencies definitely have a bias towards funding researching using fMRI technology. Unfortunately, the media does not do a good job of communicating how these ‘pretty’ brain are created; they are not displaying brain activity, but are actually displaying complex statistical maps of blood-oxygen levels. The media also doesn’t explain how most of these images have filters applied to them or are edited in another fashion to isolate distinct regions of interest with supposed brain activity. This being said, Fodor goes a bit too far in the previously mentioned quote. Why should it not matter where in the brain neural correlates of distinct mental states are? Also, I don’t think any brain scientist doubts the existence of distinct mental states just because they haven’t found a neural correlate of that distinct mental state (yet). Fodor might not be interested in finding these brain areas, but that doesn’t mean that researchers aren’t intrinsically motivated to find such areas. Also, science is not about finding the ultimate truth but rather about getting closer to the truth, much like an asymptotic line. Although Fodor is justified in his critique of the explosion of studies using brain imaging, it’s a bit extreme to suggest that we shouldn’t care about them.
But Fodor's point still stands: finding where something happens in the brain that correlates with something you can do does not explain how you can do it.
DeleteLike Harnad keeps repeating in his comments, we knew language evolved from gestures before having scientifically proven it or like Fodor states in explanation of the story: The Little Black Girl in Search of God: “She runs into Pavlov, who explains to her why he is, rather horribly, drilling holes in the mouths of dogs: it’s to show that expecting food makes them salivate. ‘But we already knew that,’ she says” Fodor uses this example to show that the “truth” of what we already know is not declared a “truth” until it is proven scientifically. He is using this to then question the use of neuroscience and neuroimaging, which in his opinion could possibly be a waste of time. I think he takes this step a bit too far. In my opinion, neuroscience is not worthless. (and as Harnad previously stated, neuroimaging is a method that (in general) doesn’t involve animal testing, unlike methods used on Pavlov’s dogs). This being said, in Searle’s online lecture (posted on the 3a blog page) he declares as a fact that consciousness is entirely caused by neurological processes in the brain. This should also be the case for cognition. I would therefore not say that neuroimaging is pointless. We need to find out the “what” and “when” in neurochemistry and neurology occurring in the brain as a step to finding out the “how” and “why” cognition occurs. These things take time and in my opinion, neuroimaging is a step in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteBut do you know of any nontrivial case in cognitive neuroscience when first finding out where and when a correlate of some capacity happens led to a causal understanding of how?
Delete“It belongs to understanding how the engine in your auto works that the functioning of its carburettor is to aerate the petrol; that’s part of the story about how the engine’s parts contribute to its running right. But why (unless you’re thinking of having it taken out) does it matter where in the engine the carburettor is? What part of how your engine works have you failed to understand if you don’t know that? “
ReplyDeleteFodor offers an interesting argument here. fMRIs, among various other brain imaging techniques, help us identify where activation occurs during a particular activity; but it fails to tell us anything about the function or how the brain is working.
However, I would disagree with that idea – knowing the anatomy is just as important as the function. When a lesion occurs in the brain, we can look at the areas and induce that certain areas are more critical to certain functions (ex. Broca’s or Wernicke’s areas for language). It’s like learning about another culture – how could we learn about the culture and the country, if we have no way of concretely pinpointing it down to a certain spot on the map. All the facts would be a jumble and seemingly unrelated; it is when we know a little about the geography that we can draw relations (ex. influences from neighbouring countries). When we know which areas are critical to which functions, we are acquiring information to formulate a more complete picture. Since the brain is such a mystery, understanding the way it functions would include understanding the various aspects, including both function and anatomy. The anatomy allows us to make connections about how the brain is “wired” and the parts are connected, and how each part that “lights” up may somehow be tied in with another. As the data accumulates, someone (hopefully) will eventually be able to devise a more complete and integrated idea of the brain.
‘’People who are good at the one should then be, potentially, equally good at the other.’’
ReplyDeleteI think there are many evidence supporting this claim Fodor seems to be skeptical about. For example, studies have shown that bilinguals, individuals trained to switch from one language to the other, are better at performing executive control tasks that ask them to inhibit a reflexive response. They are probably better than other persons at doing this because they have developed the ability to inhibit one or the other language depending on the situation. This shows that there is some kind of general intelligence or that at least, different tasks use the same resources.
Also, I agree that localization is probably not sufficient on its own, just like Fodor shows with the engine metaphor, and I do not think that if two different tasks are done at two different places, it means that they are done differently. It could just be that two different areas have the same function, and I don’t see anything that could prevent the brain from being redundant. Therefore, showing that two tasks don’t result from activation in the same area, does not prove that they don’t use the same resources. But correlated with other evidence showing that two tasks use the same resources, localization may confirm that two behaviors actually rely on the same resource.
“It isn’t, after all, seriously in doubt that talking (or riding a bicycle, or building a bridge) depends on things that go on in the brain somewhere or other. If the mind happens in space at all, it happens somewhere north of the neck. What exactly turns on knowing how far north?”
ReplyDeleteSo basically Fodor is criticizing how much money goes into localizing functions in the brain. He asks the question, why does it matter so much where the neurons are that allow us to take naps or look at teapots if we already know that these neurons are localized somewhere? I think I agree. I can think of two situations in which it would be useful to know where capacities are localized in the brain. The first, which Fodor mentions, is in brain surgery where you want to make sure you aren’t risking damaging a crucial area when you’re removing a tumor. Second, I think that it can be useful to learn where brain areas get their input from and send their output to. We can identify structures that may support cognition by looking at the results of brain damage cases in humans and lesion studies in animals and/or by analyzing the differences between the human brain and the brains of organisms that are thought to have less complex cognitive structure. Looking at where the inputs and outputs of these areas come from and go to could help us gain valuable information about how cognition works.
While I agree that trying to find out where the neurons are that light up when we think about kittens just for the sake of knowing is a waste of money, resources and lives, I think that Fodor made a good point when he wrote, “It bears emphasis that there are lots of things other than looking for functional loci that brain scientists do for a living; and that they use lots of experimental techniques other than neural imaging to do them.” Not all neuroscientific research should be dismissed as useless to the task of understanding cognition.
Fodor brings up some interesting points in his paper. I was truly entertained by his witty writing style but I found his arguments to be somewhat impoverished. I agree with his main argument, namely that neuroimaging has provided no real insight into the functioning of the brain. However, I feel as if it’s too soon to know for sure. His analogies are accurate but they are oversimplified and make his arguments seem weak and premature. For example, consider the engine analogy. Although it’s correct in a sense (i.e. It doesn’t matter where the components go if their function is unknown), Fodor is oversimplifying the point. We know the function of each component of the engine therefore, the location of individual parts seems irrelevant compared to the function. I don’t think this applies to the brain. The location of neural activity may not explain the function of a certain brain region but its relationship to other brain areas may be highlighted, which is of substantial importance. I think it would be unwise to dismiss a scientific method just because it hasn’t made highly significant contributions to the understanding of the mind. Moreover, Fodor’s use of examples (“thinking about teapots”) takes away from the achievement of different neuroimaging studies. For example, diffusion MRI has been extraordinarily successful. It is clinically used in the study and treatment of neurological disorders. It can reveal abnormalities in white matter fiber structure and provides models of brain connectivity. This ability to visualize anatomical connections between different parts of the brain, noninvasively and on an individual basis is a scientific breakthrough and should be acknowledged. In sum, I do not feel as if this methodological approach should be dismissed, as it may soon be very useful with advancements in technology.
ReplyDeleteI think a historical perspective on the importance of lesion studies back when neuropsychology was a young field can explain the current prominence of brain-imaging studies. So much of what we currently know about the brain has come out of the localization of lesions and the observation of their effects. Scientific movements have a certain inertia, and I think imaging studies are in part being carried on the wave of knowledge from lesion studies. However, if we are curious about the mind and not just the brain, I agree with Fodor that localization doesn't go very far. Even an understanding of the full structure of the brain would tell us little without an understanding of the connection between structure and function. While I also believe neuroimaging is overemphasized, I am curious as to what Fodor believes are more parsimonious and rewarding lines of research. How many ways do we have to get into the brain and look around?
ReplyDelete“It occurs to me that maybe we’re heavily invested in finding answers to which we don’t know the corresponding questions. Maybe the availability of the new technology is running the science rather than the other way round.” (pg. 2)
ReplyDeleteThis statement challenges the validity of scientific questions. Fodor identifies a problem that is still present 16 years later. He points out that money plays a huge role in what types of research we conduct. Fodor brings up this problem in the context of neuroscience, where money is invested in pursuit of big answers on consciousness. The focus on development of neuroimaging tools has the obvious goal of seeing inside the brain, and ultimately, of discovering the physical underpinnings of cognition and consciousness. Fodor challenges the assumption that the physical will tell us anything about the mind. He rightly identifies that today’s technology is most conducive to scientific questions that make this exact assumption. Power systems involving money and public interest are driving science.
I want to connect Fodor’s discussion of investment to a more general understanding of the subjectivity of science. Fodor shows how money determines what questions are being asked. In this way, money becomes a way for people in power to shape science. One example that remains in the back of my head whenever I consider the subjectivity of science is reproduction. Emily Martin made famous this example in her paper, The Egg and the Sperm, 1991. Scientists have always used gendered language (i.e. descriptions of the aggressive sperm assaulting the passive egg) in attempt to explain their biological findings on fertilization. Science thus reflects our patriarchal society and the questions we are asking seek answers that fit neatly within our understandings of the world. It wasn’t until science began asking new questions outside of this framework (researching male birth control) that new truths came out about the active nature of the egg. The point here is that power imbalances determined what scientific questions were being asked in the first place.
I didn’t do it justice in this short paragraph, but the egg and the sperm is one vivid example of how power limits science. This might be a stretch, but I find it a very helpful parallel to what Fodor is getting at in this section of his paper. Today’s investigations of the mind hinge upon the assumption that the mind is reducible to the physical brain. This underlying assumption has influenced what types of tools we’ve developed for brain research. This in turn affects and limits the direction of science and determined what types of questions are even possible to ask.
I think this is a very interesting way of looking at the article. It's very true that science has always been influenced by underlying assumptions, and although science strives to be completely objective, I think that there is no way it can ever be objective -and I don't think it should be seen as objective. Science and society should not be seen as separate spheres -indeed, society is as much a product of science as science is a product of society, and science has been used to enforce patriarchical ideals as much as it has been shaped by them.
DeleteThat being said, I'm not sure that many of the neuroscientists that Fodor is speaking about inherently assume that the mind is the brain, or are even conducting their research with the aim of proving that. As many commentors have pointed out before me, there are many neurological diseases that are one step closer to being treated now that the area of the brain they affect have been localised.
I guess, I just don't understand why anyone would assume that they'd figured out how the mind works if they managed to locate how every single action a person could take mapped on to an area in the brain. For example, knowing that the fusiform gyrus is active during face recognition doesn't explain how an increased activation of neurons actually makes you think "I know that this is a face". I feel like Fodor conflates these ideas a bit -and he's challenging something an assumption (physical brain =mind) that isn't actually being held.
"Likewise for anyone who cares about how much of the mind’s structure is innate (whatever, exactly, that means). If you think a lot of it is, you presumably expect a lot of localisation of function, not just in the adult’s brain but also in the infant’s. Whereas, if you think a lot of mental structure comes from experience (whatever, exactly, that means), you probably expect the infant’s brain to be mostly equipotential even if the adult’s brain turns out not to be."
ReplyDeleteLike many of the other commenters, I'm not too sure I agree with Fodor's point. While I generally understand that resources are limited and perhaps money is being (wrongly) funneled into the sciences that are glitzy and have currently captured the public's imagination, I find that an unconvincing principle to base his article on, because hey-that's life.
Regarding the quote, I think that brains can be both innate and equipotential. An infant's brain comes hardwired with many capabilities such as being able to regulate it's heartbeat, being able to cry when hungry, recognising the sound of it's mother's voice, having the potential to learn. Furthermore, new-born animals are born with some innate abilities -baby deer can walk almost immediately after birth.
I wonder at the distinction between knowing the location of an area in the brain and knowing the location of an area relative to other areas, (as in knowing which areas have neural connections to other areas). As Fordor said, I too suppose the former would be useful to surgeons. The latter has proved useful in extrapolating connections between various areas of the brain. If you believe that the activity of certain areas of the brain during the completion of certain functions/thoughts indicate that the active brain area is association with the thought, I believe that exploring the connections that the brain area has, could shed light on how the brain breaks down the action in question into components.
Additionally, knowing the location of areas relative to other areas has provided evidence as to which behavioral abilities evolved first.
Dia's point resonates with me. Fodor’s argument that neuro-imaging hasn’t contributed to reverse engineering cognitive capacity is right. It reminds me of the conversations we’ve had in class regarding computationalism.
ReplyDelete"But the issue is academic in the invidious sense since in fact there’s no good reason to think that similarity of psychological functions generally predicts similarity of brain locations or vice versa."
This phrase really emphasizes how subtle these unwarranted inferences can become. If this is true (which I am inclined to think it is) then can we expect the mind’s location to be predicted by brain locations? To a certain extent, sure (e.g. the frontal lobe region is implicated in decision-making, etc.) but not completely.
One thing that I keeping thinking of is how Fodor criticizes with ease but doesn’t propose alternatives. I can think of one quasi-alternative, where our ideas are not scientifically-tested. The issue I have with this is that testing hypotheses in science sometimes yields surprising but helpful conclusions. Of course in hindsight everything can seem obvious (e.g. Fodor’s Pavlov example) but sometimes testing assumptions shows us our assumptions were wrong (e.g. phrenology).
I can't help but bring in my limited knowledge from other courses into this skywriting, because I think it is particularly relevant here: anyone that is taking or has taken PHIL 474: Phenomenology must surely be thinking that Fodor would probably be on board with a phenomenological investigation into brain localization studies and the discipline of neuroscience as a whole. Husserl and Heidegger, two of the biggest names associated with the branch of philosophy known as phenomenology, were very concerned with the ways in which science in their day had lost an understanding of itself, and believed that scientists were guilty of "activity in passivity." Husserl especially argued that the mass technization, the huge developments that the field of [neuro]science has recently experienced, has blinded researchers to the true nature of the work; it is almost easier for them to take advantage of these exciting new tools to study the brain without actually having to ask why it's important to do so in the first place.
ReplyDeleteAbove, Lila has identified what I also thought was the core of the article: “It occurs to me that maybe we’re heavily invested in finding answers to which we don’t know the corresponding questions. Maybe the availability of the new technology is running the science rather than the other way round.” This is exactly the 'tragedy' or 'crisis' that Husserl wrote about in his work on phenomenology - I just thought it would be interesting to approach Fodor's article from this philosophical perspective.
I don't know if this was touched upon in your PHIL 474 class, but neurophenomenology is very exciting in my opinion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurophenomenology
DeleteWhat I find lacking in Fodor’s critique is acknowledgment of the problematic nature of almost all media articles reporting about scientific findings to the general public. So often, these news outlets predominant goals, especially in the internet age are to be digestible and readable. Punchy and clickable headlines like “Science has just proven ________” are frequent but in my opinion, extremely irresponsible.
ReplyDeleteYes, Fodor might be right in that there is a heavy emphasis on neural imaging as the experimental technique while only correlational relationships may be inferred from this data. Although, the point he is missing is that, it is how the findings are being presented rather than the experimental method that is problematic. As an undergrad, I have learned in several classes that an fMRI is not measuring synaptic activity at all, at least not directly. It measures the blood oxygen levels of the brain as it differs from a baseline. These results then transformed, computerized, and averaged are full of noise and are not taken as a perfect neuron by neuron map of brain activity. Any neuroscientist conducting research should understand this, which is why I am dubious of Fodor’s assertion that “Their idea was apparently that experimental data are, ipso facto, a good thing; and that experimental data about when and where the brain lights up are, ipso facto, a better thing than most.” Hopefully I am right to think that researchers do not see bright voxels in their data and are satisfied that this alone has answered any profound questions. What is more believable and far more worrisome to me, is that a lay person will pick up a newspaper, read a headline and interpret brightly colored pictures of the brain as scientific fact. Any good scientist will understand that science is not an absolute truth, it approaches truth asymptotically. An MRI study may not definitively prove a mental process or brain localization but it is a useful tool in reaching closer toward those answers.
His reproach of neuroimaging studies is also reasoned by his claims of meaningless questions and misguided motivation for research. Fodor writes, “Historically, studies of the localization of brain functions have often been clinically motivated, I take it to be currently the consensus that they have significant scientific import over and above their implications for medical practice.” This statement reveals a misunderstanding of what good research actually entails. First off, many medical innovations have been invented on incident or inspired by findings of tangential research, so to limit a field to questions that are valued as clinically imperative seems impudent. Also, “clinically motivated” often means privately funded and biased research. The main financer of these types of studies are drug companies or corporations with special interest in only one answer to the questions posed in their inquiry. It is beneficial for published results to be of general interest to the nature of cognition and human brains.
An obvious answer to Fodor’s question of “why the Times cares?” is that Neuroimaging studies sell papers. People like to see a picture of a brain and think they are holding definitive proof of how the brain works. Media articles tend to sensationalize research and do a bad job of explaining that correlation is not causation. A newspaper is not a peer reviewed scientific journal. Its motivations are profits and selling ad space, not elucidating the public to the current state of science. In order for Fodor to meaningfully dissect what should and should not be the focus of research, he should maybe shift the basis of his argument from headlines to the lab and focus on what might be done instead rather that what is done wrong.
It's rather ironic that the guy who proposed that all mental processing happens in semi-isolated modules, the nature of which are highly dependant on their relative location to other modules, would be completely against studying anything that has to do with their location.
ReplyDeleteI Agree with his argument that too much emphasis is being placed on collecting localization data for data's sake, and that the media's outlandish interpretations of neuroimaging studies is funneling away too much grant money into fruitless studies. However, to outright reject the usefulness of all localization experiments is rather extreme in my opinion. Even disregarding his ridiculous claim that being interested in localization amounts to being a dualist, Fodor's arguments lie mostly on the assumption that neuroscientists doing neuroimaging are bumbling idiots with no intention to go beyond finding brain-response correlations.
There's probably a few out there, but unless neuroscience stops at "Pam's brain activates at X when she does Y", there will be plenty of others gathering insight from localization studies. For example, say response A and response B take place at different places in the cortex. As a follow up study, scientists could then identify individual neurons in these regions and begin to trace the network activated by each task. Following that, they could compare the properties of said networks and perhaps derive something useful as to why the differences in said networks lead to differences in behaviour. Much has been learned about vision (and perception in general), for example, through the tracing of networks from the periphery to the cortex. Cognition, of course, is much more complex, but seeing how at some point our explanation for it has to be grounded in its neural implementation, there is surely no harm in looking for the neural correlates themselves .
The critique of neural imaging as a reductionist view is valid but it is not well done by Fodor. He should say that it is futile and dismiss it with better arguments than his motor engine/brain analogy, because in both cases you need to know where the object is in order to act on it. And also, you can't prove localization without studying location and, if useful at all, it should be useful for medical uses. I do not see in Fodor(1999) the question formulated really differently from ''why is this or that other type of science useful? why is cognitive science useful?'', this question is valid, but what we need are answers or answers as to why they are not worth exploring.
ReplyDeleteI think what is most interesting about this article is that Fodor points to more concrete problems in the scientific practice, such as the attribution of resources. It is indeed a problem that the limited resources (mainly monetary) are dispatched to many research that, although shouldn't be wholly discarded, are not relevant and useful in our needs for solving broad problems such as disease, crises, epidemics. In fact, as Fodor points out, it seems that ''the availability of the new technology is running the science rather than the other way round''; the availability and the potential for profit (creating markets for the machines, creating new machines, etc.). So this article follows from the problem that ''hard'' sciences are often separated and put above all the rest of social spheres and types of knowledge, as distinct, true and valid for itself. This position allows it to evade most critiques about its ways and its aims and embarks it on a walled in highway. This article, although clumsily, pointed to that question.
From reading previous comments, I do agree that finding out where and when something happens in the brain will not explain cognitive capacity. But is this not a step in the right direction at least? To be able to reverse-engineer cognitive capacity I still believe we can learn a great deal from neuroimaging, just like we can learn a lot from computation. It might not be the answer, but it is helpful to know that it is not and what we can learn from it. To claim that neuroimaging techniques are essentially a waste of time is very upsetting (to say the least) to me. Philosophically, it is able to show that dualism is most likely incorrect because there is a physical manifestation in the body of mental states that is not just based on chance; when you think of something an area in your brain activates every time and it is always the same area at the same time. Yes, this is not causation, but it is a correlation, and a very strong one at that. In terms of explaining how the brain does this, neuroimaging fails –I’ll give that to Fodor. To be able to prove that dualism is false though does give reverse engineering cognitive capacity a chance. No, neuroimaging does not show how it can be done, but at least it is able to prove that it is possible and that the brain generates thinking. I agree with Fodor towards the end of his letter that brain imaging researchers are wasting their time, there is no need to know exactly where in the brain one thinks about teapots or taking a nap –but on more important elements such as where consciousness occurs I think there is a lot to learn and that it is worth the resources necessary for neuroimaging.
ReplyDelete"If the brain does different tasks at different places, that rather suggests that it may do them in different ways. Whereas, if anything that the brain can do it can do just about anywhere, that rather suggests that different kinds of thinking may recruit quite similar neural mechanisms."
ReplyDeleteAlthough this passage seems to capture a key point in the article, I don't agree with it. Even the most precise of tools for imaging the living human brain still can't examine the brain with a high enough resolution to know which neurons are firing, so I don't believe this argument holds.
At any moment within one voxel (the smallest unit of resolution for magnetic resonance imaging), it is likely that a variety of neural processes are happening simultaneously. As such, it seems silly to me to assume that activation in one location at one moment in time is the same as activation in that location in a different time. Additionally, it seems relatively likely to me that two processes could activate the same brain regions in a neuroimaging study but have completely different mechanisms.
By the same token, I also don't see why Fodor is asserting that neural mechanisms necessarily vary based on their location in the brain. We do know about some high-level structural differences in various parts of the brain, but not enough (in my opinion) to infer that the neural mechanisms in one part of the brain are necessarily different from similar mechanisms elsewhere. In other words, I don't see any reason to believe that localization of a particular event tells us about how similar the neural mechanisms it recruits are. For all I know, recruitment of neural mechanisms from the other side of the brain may occur to ensure proper timing and synchrony of neural activity (which would be unrelated to mechanisms at any particular part in the brain) since signals take time to travel across the brain.
"It may be that some such thought also motivates the current interest in brain localization. Granted that we always sort of knew that there’s a difference between nouns and verbs, or between thinking about teapots and taking a nap, we didn’t really know it till somebody found them at different places in the brain. Now that somebody has, we know it scientifically."
One of the things that bothers me about this is line of reasoning is that there are plenty of ways to scientifically test the difference between nouns and verbs without spending vast amounts of research funding looking at brain activations. A simple psychological experiment could confirm that humans reliably react differently to nouns vs. verbs, and I would consider that to be on par with neuroscientific evidence in terms of strength. Both are merely correlations between behaviours and certain categories of words.