The Indirectness of Studies of Mind and Brain
Many of the methods and techniques central to neuroscientific discovery rely on assumptions that can limit the interpretation of the data. Philosophers of Neuroscience have discussed such assumptions in the use of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Dissociation in Cognitive Neuropsychology, single unit recording, and computational neuroscience. Following are descriptions of many of the current controversies and debates about the methods employed in neuroscience.
Read more about this topic: Neurophilosophy
Famous quotes containing the words studies, mind and/or brain:
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting
yet.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (18441889)
“...here he is, fully alive, and it is hard to picture him fully dead. Death is thirty-three hours away and here we are talking about the brain size of birds and bloodhounds and hunting in the woods. You can only attend to death for so long before the life force sucks you right in again.”
—Helen Prejean (b. 1940)