Casting Light on the Dark Side of Brain Imaging

The human brain is a black box – stimuli go in, thoughts, words and precursors to behavior emerge. Nobody knows what happens in the interim. Then brain imaging technology and its accompanying hype appeared. And guess what? The brain remains a mysterious black box. So say Amir Raz – Canada Research Chair in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention at the department of psychiatry at McGill University and Robert T. Thibault – postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bristol. They assert that science and medicine know little about how the brain works, and that scientific evidence doesn’t support the roles people envision for brain imaging in psychiatry, medicine and even criminal law.

Brain Imaging

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a brain imaging technique. In noninvasive EEG, electrodes attached to the scalp record the electrical activity of brain cells. A related method, magnetoencephalography (MEG), records changes in magnetic fields the electrical activity of brain cells evoke.