Unfortunately, the authors say at the outset that their paper is "Not to be quoted or reproduced without the expressed permission of one of the authors prior to publication" so I'm not going to... oh, hang on. Have I just broken the rules by quoting that? I hope not. But fair enough.
The paper describes an fMRI study of brain responses to being shown a variety of statements. The participants were students and the statements were about the university experience. They were either positive, negative, or neutral.
The authors found that the human brain responds differently to different kinds of stuff.
That's it. Well that ought to be it. The paper discusses things like Coaching With Compassion, The Ideal Self, and Intentional Change Theory, which are awesome no doubt, but they're not what this study is about.
Here's why. Before getting scanned, the students got two sessions of academic and career coaching. One session was focussed on hopes and goals for the future, dreams, and what they wanted to achieve in their studies. Yes you can! The other session, with a different coach, was all about challenges, fears, and disappointments. Maybe you can't.
The positive and the negative statements in the fMRI bit were based on these coaching interviews. The coach who did the nice bit said the nice statements (via recorded video clips) and vice versa. The positive and negative coaches were randomly assigned to each participant to avoid coach effects, and so on, which is good, the fMRI methodology was fine, and the data analysis looks good.
Who'd have thought it? Different parts of the brain were activated by positive, negative and neutral statements, and these were roughly what you'd expect from previous studies.
The reason this says nothing about coaching is that while participants got coaching beforehand, they all got the same coaching. These statements would have been positive or negative anyway - coaching or no. We don't know what, if any, effect coaching had.
Had half of them been randomized to get coached, and the other half assigned to a "placebo" coaching, say chatting about sports or the weather, then it would tell you something about coaching.
But that wouldn't mean it told you anything interesting about it, and this is the deeper problem with studies like this, of which this is only a good example.
Suppose that you found that positive, Compassionate Coaching made the brain respond more strongly to positive statements, or changed brain activity during decision-making, or whatever. That would be a result, and it might be really strong and statistically very significant, but for the life of me I can't see why you'd care, if you were interested in coaching.
Of course coaching affects the brain, and not just as a side effect: if it works, it'll work via changing the brain, in some way. But everything that changes behaviour changes the brain. That's what the brain does. How it does so is a detail of interest only to neuroscientists.
If you're a coach, or want to get coaching, or want to know whether coaching is effective, then you should look at coaching. The brain will be there, in the background, activating and deactivating happily, but it's not going to help you.
These kinds of studies happen, I think, because there's an inherent allure to seeing "the neural basis of" thoughts and feelings. It seems paradoxical and disturbing: you can't see thoughts! They're made of pixie dust and magic!
In the same way, quantum physics is universally agreed to be "weird". But it's always there, everywhere in the universe, and always has been. We're the weird ones, with our strange conviction that the most everyday thing in the world is really bizarre. God must find quantum physics incredibly boring.
Brains are not quite as commonplace as quarks, but they are at work whenever anyone, or most animals for that matter, does anything. Of course: how else would behaviour happen? We find this odd and fascinating. As a neuroscientist I'm no exception, the allure never "wears off". But that's just us.
Even people trying to be neuro-skeptical often fall into this trap. Here's Steven Rose in book review:
The weird locution – “it was not me; it was my brain that made me do it” – is increasingly used by neuroscientists who are sure that human thought and action are reducible to brain processes, and by legal defence teams pleading diminished responsibility for their clients. The trouble is that this way of speaking – and thinking, if such a term remains permissible – leaves unresolved who is the “me” that the brain drives.”
Well, human thought and action are reducible to brain processes. To deny this or (as is more common) imply that it's unhelpful, but not explain why, gets us nowhere.
The point is that all behaviour is brain activity, and that's why saying "It's brain activity" tells us nothing about any given behaviour. It’s an empty truism, like saying that a fire was started by something hot. Well, duh.
8 comments:
You are assuming that human activity is something that counts. That's rather anthropocentric.
Ofcourse it's all due to brain activity, and why it does what it does is also clear.
There's not much more one could say about it, that level of introspection is way beyond the capacity of the storyteller.
It's a mobius strip, we find ourselves relevant so therefore everything we do must be relevant. But it's only relevant to us.
I guess you fell in the trap just next to the one you described, in the trap of relevance. Spirituality, religion even.
There is no 'me' as such. It's just a side effect of a vast data processing/collating unit.
Without 'me' our species would perfectly well function. In fact would stand a much greater chance of survival as a species.
Homo sapiens is an evolutionary dead end. Nice try, now on to the next species.
I agree that this study is not novel or interesting, but disagree with a few of your final thoughts.
"Well, human thought and action are reducible to brain processes."
Action is clearly not reducible to brain processes, it also depends on the brain's environment (including the spinal cord, the PNS, the body, and the world outside).
"To deny this or (as is more common) imply that it's unhelpful, but not explain why, gets us nowhere."
If you make the claim that thoughts are reducible to brain processes, shouldn't the burden of proof be on you? We have very little understanding of what a "thought" is, perhaps it can be reduced to a spatiotemporal pattern of neuronal activation, but perhaps not. Furthermore, why would you not include the endocrine system? It certainly has a large effect on brain state. Would you include the cerebellum and brainstem, or maybe limit it to cortex and thalamus? I think it's tricky to assign a nebulous concept like a "thought" into one compartment, the brain. Thought is the result of complex interactions of external and internal events, the brain is clearly necessary for thought but may not sufficiently explain it.
It explains it quite simply. It's a continuous feedbackloop of the collation of data form all systems. It needs all systems humming along to cause enough data to flow to keep a 'self' intact.
Already the loss of conscious focus when the brain is involved in an intensive task is a very strong indicator.
More computing power is rerouted to the task at hand leaving no more to keep 'self' running.
Try and read a book with strong focus and be aware of yourself, thinking about other things at the same time.
It's the one or the other. either you are into the book, or you are you.
There's no need to complicate things, it' simple.
The "me" that the brain drives is the musculo-skeletal system.
I agree that this (award winning!) article is in fact confusing about what they have studied and what they claim to have studied. There might be a better study design than this. When we want to study effect of something on brain, we face problems of lacking a good instrument to do it (even fMRI is a crude thing), and very less is known about the brain itself. And we still have to support ourselves with philosophy when questions like ‘thoughts’, or concept of ‘me’ arise… and this is what that makes neuroscience an extremely exciting thing!
The article aside, I love it when an article pretends to claim that no one is allowed to quote it without permission.
False. Copyright guarantees the creator/owner's rights, but they can not disclaim Fair Use, which grants the public defensible exceptions.
Love your writing. I'll take the broccoli.
"Well, human thought and action are reducible to brain processes. To deny this or (as is more common) imply that it's unhelpful, but not explain why, gets us nowhere."
I do think this leaves you vulnerable to the various arguments against reductionism. However beyond that love the article, esp. the "pixie dust" analogy, and wish to heck my non-science friends would read it - they are the ones who mist over when they read a pop account of an MRI study in something like the New York Times Science section. But then the appeal of science to most laypeople (probably including me, sigh) is not a better understanding of the world, but fine-sounding romance.
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