Rob's review of The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain

The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology)
by William R. Uttal

Rob's review

rating:

bookshelves: 2008, science

recommended for: neuroscientists of all stripes

status: Read in February, 2008

In a nutshell? Uttal is arguing that the modern imaging technologies (e.g., fMRI) are toys used by cognitive neuroscientists that are following their theories and using these subtractive methods to come up with supporting data for what is otherwise intractable. In other words, much of modern cognitive neuroscience is on a fool's errand because we really don't even have a working definition for what "thought" and "mind" are and so how could we possibly hope to match up its specific component parts and processes with specific brain regions?

This is a highly technical text, to be sure. (Example: Uttal will throw out a term like "physiological psychology" in contrast to "cognitive neuroscience" without defining the two for differentiation. You are expected to know.)

The underlying thesis here is not that neural imaging is in any way bad or wrong, it is that many researchers are using these techniques in such a fashion that t...more In a nutshell? Uttal is arguing that the modern imaging technologies (e.g., fMRI) are toys used by cognitive neuroscientists that are following their theories and using these subtractive methods to come up with supporting data for what is otherwise intractable. In other words, much of modern cognitive neuroscience is on a fool's errand because we really don't even have a working definition for what "thought" and "mind" are and so how could we possibly hope to match up its specific component parts and processes with specific brain regions?

This is a highly technical text, to be sure. (Example: Uttal will throw out a term like "physiological psychology" in contrast to "cognitive neuroscience" without defining the two for differentiation. You are expected to know.)

The underlying thesis here is not that neural imaging is in any way bad or wrong, it is that many researchers are using these techniques in such a fashion that they have not stopped to adequately define the terms they are using or the questions they are asking. Uttal states repeatedly that there is no hard scientific evidence that the brain can be componentized or modularized; he suggests that these localization attempts are futile. (A striking example he gives is how subtractive fMRI was used to provide "evidence" of a "face recognition center" in the brain but how that same brain area showed the same kinds of activation when "recognizing" cars or birds or pictures of places.) Uttal's arguments can be difficult to parse because of their highly nuanced nature; that there is structural specialization within the brain is well-established for many things -- but those "things" are sensory or motor in nature and have no reflection on "cognition". He asks repeatedly: is "cognition" even something that you can define? And if you can define it, is it something that you can measure experimentally? Is cognition directly observable? Or are we limited to observations of cognition's artifacts? Its descendant behaviors?

The book is rigorous and technical; ultimately rewarding but certainly not something to approach casually. (But then again, it is targeted at scientists.)(less)

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Rob's review of The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain

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