Neuroscientific Explanations Research Articles

Rethinking Gender Politics in Laboratories and Neuroscience Research: The Case of Spatial Abilities in Math Performance

What does it mean to practice socially responsible science on controversial issues? In a fresh turn focussing on the neuroscientists’ responsibility in producing knowledge about politically charged subjects, Chalfin et al. (Am J Bioethics 8(1):1–2, 2008) caution neuroscientists to be careful about how they present their findings lest their results be used to support unfounded biases, social stereotypes and prejudices. Weisberg et al. (J Cogn Neurosci 20(3):470–477, 2008) discuss the allure of neuroscience explanations and demonstrate how laypersons easily accept dubious claims as long as (even non-relevant) neuroscientific descriptions are provided. Fine (2010) exposes the use of scientific evidence in propagating outdated gender myths by popular writers and discusses the infiltration of these prejudices into popular belief, folk culture and lifestyle. This paper discusses ways in which the ‘neuroscience of gender difference’ itself inadvertently contributes to normalising socially constructed theories about sex difference in cognitive performance. This unpremeditated effect has evident implications on the structuring of society because gender relations cut across social, political and economic boundaries. We present a theoretical reflection of factors that could interact with the scientists’ attempted objective evaluation of the subject, the methods and some principle problems, and we engage a science studies approach as our methodological tool. Our object of critique is drawn from the research on spatial abilities that articulate the dissention pertaining to sex differences in intellectual capacity.

Neuroimages as evidence in a mens rea defense: No impact.

Recent developments in the neuropsychology of criminal behavior have given rise to concerns that neuroimaging evidence (such as MRI and functional MRI [fMRI] images) could unduly influence jurors. Across four experiments, a nationally representative sample of 1,476 jury-eligible participants evaluated written summaries of criminal cases in which expert testimony was presented in support of a mental disorder as exculpatory. The evidence varied in the extent to which it presented neuroscientific explanations and neuroimages in support of the expert’s conclusion. Despite suggestive findings from previous research, we found no evidence that neuroimagery affected jurors’ judgments (verdicts, sentence recom-mendations, judgments of the defendant’s culpability) over and above verbal neuroscience - based testimony. A meta-analysis of our four experiments confirmed these findings. In addition, we found that neuroscientific evidence was more effective than clinical psycho- logical evidence in persuading jurors that the defendant’s disorder reduced his capacity to control his actions, although this effect did not translate into differences in verdicts.

Neuroscience and Young Adult Fiction: A Recipe for Trouble?

Neuroscience and Young Adult Fiction: A Recipe for Trouble?

The notion of computation is fundamental to an autonomous neuroscience

AbstractThe increasing sophistication of the tools and results of cellular and molecular neuroscience would appear to suggest that explanatory force in neuroscience is defined by reduction to molecular biology. This view, however, is mistaken in that it loses sight of the goal of neuroscience proper: the characterization of the information content of biophysical variables and the transformation of these variables that lead to behaviors. Neuroscience is thus distinguished from applied molecular and cellular biology by the notion of computation. In this commentary, I will show how the notion of computation in neuroscience differs from that of other fields that investigate complex systems and argue that computation at various levels of neural organization is the paramount goal of neuroscientific explanation and not the so‐called reduction of “mind to molecules.” © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity, 16,10–19, 2010

Minds, Brains, and Norms

Arguments for the importance of neuroscience reach across many disciplines. Advocates of neuroscience have made wide-ranging claims for neuroscience in the realms of ethics, value, and law. In law, for example, many scholars have argued for an increased role for neuroscientific evidence in the assessment of criminal responsibility. In this article, we take up claims for the explanatory role of neuroscience in matters of morals and law. Drawing on our previous work together, we assess the cogency of neuroscientific explanations of three issues that arise in these domains: rule following, interpretation, and knowledge. We critique these explanations and in general challenge claims as to the efficacy of the neuroscientific accounts.

A Neuroskeptic's Guide to Neuroethics and National Security

This article—informed by science studies scholarship and consonant with the emerging enterprise of “critical neuroscience”—critiques recent neuroscience research, and its current and potential applications in the national security context. The author expresses concern about the subtle interplay between the national security and neuroscience communities, and the hazards of the mutual enchantment that may ensue. The Bush Administration's “war on terror” has provided numerous examples of the abuse of medicine, behavioral psychology, polygraphy, and satellite imagery. The defense and national security communities have an ongoing interest in neuroscience too—in particular, neuroimaging and psychoactive drugs (including oxytocin) as aids to interrogation. Given the seductive allure of neuroscientific explanations and colorful brain images, neuroscience in a national security context is particularly vulnerable to abuse. The author calls for an urgent reevaluation of national security neuroscience as part of a broader public discussion about neuroscience's nontherapeutic goals.

On the relation between neural and psychological mechanisms: neuropsychoanalysis and the “new mechanists”

The relationship between neuroscience and psychoanalysis is studied by taking “the new mechanism of neuroscience” under scrutiny. That new trend stresses that neuroscientific explanations are mechanistic explanations in particular. Since the issue of psychological mechanisms lies at the core of psychoanalysis, it is crucial to study the relationship between neural and psychological mechanisms. The authors argue that neuroscience cannot verify psychoanalytic theories. However, by combining neuroscientific and psychoanalytic (psychological) viewpoints, it will be possible to approach a more holistic picture of psychological phenomena, here suggested by a new conception of defense mechanisms.

Do all Human Functions and Behaviors, as well as the “Self”, Have Cholinergic Correlates?

In the course of the five most recent International Symposia on Cholinergic Mechanisms (ISCMs) as well as at this XIII ISCM, the focus was mostly on matters microscopic and molecular, except for solitary excursions into memory and learning, addiction, and clinical and toxicological subjects. In fact, this is also true for many recent reviews and meetings concerned with the cholinergic transmission. Yet, macroscopic and overt phenomena that are of great importance have strong cholinergic correlates. To remedy this lacuna, macromolecular overt cholinergic brain-dependent activities will be reviewed such as reflex automatic phenomena, EEG functions, behaviors, and the sense of the "self" or "self-awareness", particularly the difficulties associated with neuroscientific explanation of the "self," and the many approaches to this dilemma will be discussed.

Causes without Mechanisms: Experimental Regularities, Physical Laws, and Neuroscientific Explanation

This article examines the role of experimental generalizations and physical laws in neuroscientific explanations, using Hodgkin and Huxley's electrophysiological model from 1952 as a test case. I show that the fact that the model was partly fitted to experimental data did not affect its explanatory status, nor did the false mechanistic assumptions made by Hodgkin and Huxley. The model satisfies two important criteria of explanatory status: it contains invariant generalizations and it is modular (both in James Woodward's sense). Further, I argue that there is a sense in which the explanatory heteronomy thesis holds true for this case.

The multiplicity of experimental protocols: a challenge to reductionist and non-reductionist models of the unity of neuroscience

Descriptive accounts of the nature of explanation in neuroscience and the global goals of such explanation have recently proliferated in the philosophy of neuroscience (e.g., Bechtel, Mental mechanisms: Philosophical perspectives on cognitive neuroscience. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2007; Bickle, Philosophy and neuroscience: A ruthlessly reductive account. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing, 2003; Bickle, Synthese, 151, 411–434, 2006; Craver, Explaining the brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) and with them new understandings of the experimental practices of neuroscientists have emerged. In this paper, I consider two models of such practices; one that takes them to be reductive; another that takes them to be integrative. I investigate those areas of the neuroscience of learning and memory from which the examples used to substantiate these models are culled, and argue that the multiplicity of experimental protocols used in these research areas presents specific challenges for both models. In my view, these challenges have been overlooked largely because philosophers have hitherto failed to pay sufficient attention to fundamental features of experimental practice. I demonstrate that when we do pay attention to such features, evidence for reduction and integrative unity in neuroscience is simply not borne out. I end by suggesting some new directions for the philosophy of neuroscience that pertain to taking a closer look at the nature of neuroscientific experiments.

The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations

The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations

The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations

Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information. Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people's abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation. We tested this hypothesis by giving naïve adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience experts brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of four types of explanation, according to a 2 (good explanation vs. bad explanation) x 2 (without neuroscience vs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience information was irrelevant to the logic of the explanation, as confirmed by the expert subjects. Subjects in all three groups judged good explanations as more satisfying than bad ones. But subjects in the two nonexpert groups additionally judged that explanations with logically irrelevant neuroscience information were more satisfying than explanations without. The neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on nonexperts' judgments of bad explanations, masking otherwise salient problems in these explanations.

Integrating art historical, psychological, and neuroscientific explanations of artists' advantages in drawing and perception.

Art historians, artists, psychologists, and neuroscientists have long asserted that artists perceive the world differently than nonartists. Although empirical research on the nature and correlates of skilled drawing is limited, the available evidence supports this view: artists outperform nonartists on visual analysis and form recognition tasks and their perceptual advantages are correlated with and can be largely accounted for by drawing skill. The authors propose an integrative model to explain these results, derived from research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience on how category knowledge, attention, and motor plans influence visual perception. The authors claim that (a) artists' specialized, declarative knowledge of the structure of objects' and (b) motor priming achieved via proceduralization and practice in an artistic medium both contribute to attention-shifting mechanisms that enhance the encoding of expected features in the visual field and account for artists' advantages in drawing and visual analysis. Suggestions for testing the model are discussed. Skilled visual artists are able to create convincing representa- tional drawings and paintings; in contrast, realistic rendering is extraordinarily difficult for most nonartists. How can we under- stand this profound disparity? One long-standing explanation is that artists perceive the world differently than nonartists. This view has been espoused by artists (Goldwater & Treves, 1972; Schlewitt-Haynes, Earthman, & Burns, 2002), art instructors (Dodson, 1985; Hale, 1964), art critics and historians (Fry, 1919/ 1981; Gombrich, 1960; Ruskin, 1857/1971), psychologists (Arnheim, 1954; Cohen & Bennett, 1997; Kozbelt, 2001; Mitchell, Ropar, Ackroyd, & Rajendran, 2005), and neuroscientists (Chatterjee, 2004; Livingstone, 2002; Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999; Zeki & Lamb, 1994). However, far from resolving the issue, this claim raises a host of additional questions. If the assertion is true, what is the nature of artists' perceptual differences? What mechanisms are involved? How are such differences related to drawing skill? In this article, we attempt to integrate these perspectives into a unified account and offer a provisional explanation of psycholog- ical mechanisms underlying artists' drawing and perceptual abili- ties. Although the psychological basis of skilled drawing remains a relatively neglected area of investigation, the available evidence supports the claim that artists do perceive the world differently, and in some respects better, than nonartists. By better, we mean objectively measurable superior performance on tasks relevant to meaningful computational goals, such as recognizing objects in blurry or otherwise degraded images. We review theoretical per- spectives on artists' perceptual abilities from several disciplines and examine supporting empirical evidence. We then propose an integrative, interdisciplinary model to account for these results. The model is derived from recent research in psychology and cognitive neuroscience on the roles played by category knowledge and motor planning in visual attention and perception. We argue that artists develop attentional strategies that enhance the encoding of expected features in the visual field. These strategies operate in two ways: (a) via specialized, declarative knowledge of the struc- ture of appearances of objects and scenes and (b) via motor priming achieved through proceduralization and practice of pro- ductive techniques in artistic media. Both of these focus attention on stimulus features relevant for adequate depiction. Because these features are also diagnostic for identifying objects, we argue that artists' attentional strategies account for their perceptual advan- tages as well. We conclude by proposing ways to test the model.

Haptic perception is a dynamic system of cutaneous, proprioceptive, and motor components

AbstractA general shortcoming of the localist, decompositional, approach to neuroscientific explanation that the target article exemplifies, is that it is incomplete unless supplemented with an account of how the hypothesized subsystems integrate in the normal case. Besides, a number of studies that show that object recognition is proprioception dependent and that cutaneous information affects motor performance make the existence of the proposed subsystems doubtful.

The Social Implications of Neurobiological Explanations of Resistible Compulsions

A major attraction of neuroscientific explanations of addiction is their potential to reduce community skepticism about the “reality” of addiction. By highlighting the neurophysiological changes th...

Cortical Dynamics As A Therapeutic Mechanism for Touch Healing

Touch Healing (TH) therapies, defined here as treatments whose primary route of administration is tactile contact and/or active guiding of somatic attention, are ubiquitous across cultures. Despite increasing integration of TH into mainstream medicine through therapies such as Reiki, Therapeutic Touch,(TM) and somatically focused meditation practices such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, relatively little is known about potential underlying mechanisms. Here, we present a neuroscientific explanation for the prevalence and effectiveness of TH therapies for relieving chronic pain. We begin with a cross-cultural review of several different types of TH treatments and identify common characteristics, including: light tactile contact and/or a somatosensory attention directed toward the body, a behaviorally relevant context, a relaxed context and repeated treatment sessions. These cardinal features are also key elements of established mechanisms of neural plasticity in somatosensory cortical maps, suggesting that sensory reorganization is a mechanism for the healing observed. Consideration of the potential health benefits of meditation practice specifically suggests that these practices provide training in the regulation of neural and perceptual dynamics that provide ongoing resistance to the development of maladaptive somatic representations. This model provides several direct predictions for investigating ways that TH may induce cortical plasticity and dynamics in pain remediation.

Computational explanation in neuroscience

Accordingtosomephilosophers,computationalexplanationisproprietary to psychology—it does not belong in neuroscience. But neuroscientists routinely offer computational explanations of cognitive phenomena. In fact, computational explana- tion was initially imported from computability theory into the science of mind by neuroscientists, who justified this move on neurophysiological grounds. Establishing the legitimacy and importance of computational explanation in neuroscience is one thing; shedding light on it is another. I raise some philosophical questions pertain- ing to computational explanation and outline some promising answers that are being developed by a number of authors.

Reciprocal Benefits of Mass-Univariate and Multivariate Modeling in Brain Mapping: Applications to Event-Related Functional MRI, H215O-, and FDG-PET

In brain mapping studies of sensory, cognitive, and motor operations, specific waveforms of dynamic neural activity are predicted based on theoretical models of human information processing. For example in event-related functional MRI (fMRI), the general linear model (GLM) is employed in mass-univariate analyses to identify the regions whose dynamic activity closely matches the expected waveforms. By comparison multivariate analyses based on PCA or ICA provide greater flexibility in detecting spatiotemporal properties of experimental data that may strongly support alternative neuroscientific explanations. We investigated conjoint multivariate and mass-univariate analyses that combine the capabilities to (1) verify activation of neural machinery we already understand and (2) discover reliable signatures of new neural machinery. We examined combinations of GLM and PCA that recover latent neural signals (waveforms and footprints) with greater accuracy than either method alone. Comparative results are illustrated with analyses of real fMRI data, adding to Monte Carlo simulation support.

Philosophy of Mind in the Clinic: The Relation between Causal and Meaningful Explanation in Psychiatry

Conceptual dichotomies between mind and brain, psychology and neuroscience, meaning and causation, and fact and value confound thinking in philosophy of mind, clinical psychiatry, and psychiatric ethics. Paul Churchland's theory of eliminative materialism highlights these dichotomies, stating that advances in neuroscience have restricted, and eventually will eliminate, any need for psychology. The core principles of this theory are questionable, because psychiatrists still need psychology and perhaps always will. The main argument in this essay is that even in cases of well-defined brain pathology (where eliminative materialism seems most plausible), psychological concepts remain critical. Thus, philosophers and psychiatrists should generate conceptual models that lead not to eliminativism but to explanatory pluralism, which is the pragmatic integration of diverse concepts toward the end of better handling clinical challenges. The contributions of Karl Jaspers in opposition to eliminative materialism and in support of pluralism are discussed. Jaspers delineated the role of meaningful psychological explanation in a psychiatry rooted in neuroscientific explanation. However, his notion that meaningful states do not have causal power is disputable and has come under fire in recent philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience, which highlight the possibility that meaningful psychological states can be causally significant. This idea has implications for psychiatric ethics and the fact/value debate.

Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account

Strong forms of dualism and eliminative materialism block any significant dialogue between the neurosciences and theology. The present article thus challenges the Sufficiency Thesis, according to which neuroscientific explanations will finally be sufficient to fully explain human behavior. It then explores the various ways in which neuroscientific results and theological interpretations contribute to an overall theory of the person. Supervenience theories, which hold that mental events are dependent on their physical substrata but not reducible to them, are explained. Challenging the determinism of “strong” supervenience, I defend a version of “soft” supervenience that allows for genuine mental causation. This view gives rise in turn to an emergentist theory of the person. Still, I remain a monist: there are many types of properties encountered in the world, although it is only the one nature that bears all these properties. The resulting position, emergentist monism, allows for diversity within the context of the one world. This view is open at the top for theological applications and interpretations while retaining the close link to neuroscientific study and its results. Theology offers an interpretation of the whole world based on a yet higher order of emergence, although the notion of God moves beyond the natural order as a whole. It therefore supplements the natural scientific study of the world without negating it.