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As a cognitive scientist with only 1 graduate level fMRI course and no hands-on experience outside of playing around with Neurodebian, I will not be so bold (ha
by checkyoursudo 6y ago
As a cognitive scientist with only 1 graduate level fMRI course and no hands-on experience outside of playing around with Neurodebian, I will not be so bold (haha) as to make a claim that there is absolutely nothing to fMRI.
However, I am very skeptical.
I would not be willing to make any strong claims about causality when the alleged neural event and the measurement thereof are 15-30 seconds apart, and the thing being measured (blood flow) is not the event itself (neural activity), and there are so, so many potential sources of error.
Now, structural MRI is super cool.
I have a bunch of friends at my university who work in fMRI brain imaging. I feel bad, but when we talk about their work, I can't help but think they are chasing alchemy. Or maybe a better analogy is that it is almost like they are trying to learn about the world (brain, cognition) based on the shadows at the back of Plato's cave (fMRI BOLD signals).
I sincerely hope they overcome the challenges, but I expect they will be facing the exact or nearly the same challenges 20 years from now.
- tartoran 6y agoEven if they’re on a deadend they may discover a thing or two that can be applied somewhere else. But I hear you, your intuition is probably right. But if they left this area unexplored it would still be a loss.
- checkyoursudo 6y agoYes, of course this is reasonable. Progress still requires ruling out reasonable avenues of exploration. And even some relatively unreasonable ones.
- glial 6y ago> I am very skeptical As a fellow cognitive scientist, I am too.
- Toenex 6y agoIt's a while since I ran fMRI studies but my favourite analogy was to tell people that it was like trying to measure your electricity usage by watching your water meter.
- checkyoursudo 6y agoHey, that's a good one.