Following your analogy, trying to understand the brain by putting a few dozen electrodes in it is like trying to understand the economy based on watching people

Following your analogy, trying to understand the brain by putting a few dozen electrodes in it is like trying to understand the economy based on watching people interact in a few dozen rooms. Like you, I am skeptical of the explosion of human neuroimaging, but I think that, as a technique for determining where to drop your electrodes, fMRI can be a very powerful tool.