Friday, March 23, 2012

Yesterday's Toothpicks are Today's Baseball Bats: fMRI ≠ 42

Another in a string of reasons not to get too enamored of the idea that fMRI scans are scientific mind reading. Turns out they miss a lot activity that might be important.

"These papers illustrate the fact that conventional fMRI is a blunt instrument that often only tells us about the most straightforward events that happen in the brain. A bit like how we only hear the shouts and screams from through our neighbor's walls, not their normal conversations, which aren't loud enough to reach our ears."


For the Douglas Adams impaired, 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.