_delirium's contention is simply that all brain states (even those underlying "psychological issues") have physical bases and therefore we can (theoretically) m

_delirium's contention is simply that all brain states (even those underlying "psychological issues") have physical bases and therefore we can (theoretically) measure them. The problem is that a set of brain states may have different "causes" -- and causation get's really tricky here but that's another story. For example, the measured brain states associated with burn out could be do to a chemical deficiency (either in diet or genetic), or be because the person worked a long day at work, or perhaps could be a result of the person staying up very late playing video games. Most people would agree that the first is a disease state, but what about the second? The third? Finally, with respect to their finding that burnout was associated with smaller potentials, assuming that they made their measurements using fMRI[1], then they were measuring changes in blood flow, which in turn are putatively reflective of the metabolic activity of nearby neurons, which in turn is putatively reflective of their frequency of excitation, averaged over some interval. There are circumstances where the magnitude of individual action potentials are affected, but I strongly doubt that is what they are talking about here, not the least because I don't see how they could measure it. 1. If they instead used EEG, I can make a similar argument that they are still measuring frequency of excitation.