3 ms·
It’s always great to have informed responses here so thank you for contributing. I gotta say though regarding the other comments on data quality, if a lay pers
by WhitneyLand 9y ago
It’s always great to have informed responses here so thank you for contributing.
I gotta say though regarding the other comments on data quality, if a lay person read through the wiki pages on common brain imaging techniques (as I did) including fMRI, it seems easy to come away, rightly or wrongly, thinking, that’s all we have? That’s the state of the art spatial/temporal resolution? No wonder we can’t model the brain from first principles.
The amount of innovation, effort, and complexity that was needed to get imaging where it is today seems amazing to me, just glossing over the major achievements, it’s nobel prize level stuff. Yet you guys seem to have to still work in so much darkness with so little light. It seems rather than imaging one day simply revealing fundamental secrets, it’s just providing clues that will continue to require great insights and experiments to change the world.
But again, full admission of popcorn eating ignorance in these assumptions.
- omginternets 9y agoYou hit the nail on the head. Cognitive neuroscience -- especially WRT functional imagery -- reminds of the fable of the blind men and the Elephant. (Very) roughly speaking, you have the choice between: - Excellent temporal resolution & crappy spatial resolution (EEG / MEG) - Pretty good spatial resolution & crappy temporal resolution (fMRI) Other techniques (NIRS, TMS, etc) fall somewhere along the spectrum and have their own quirks. We're peering into brain function with a super-low-res "camera" and attempting to draw only the roughest contours of the thing we're exploring.