The New Science of Mind – by Eric Kandel
THESE
days it is easy to get irritated with the exaggerated interpretations of brain
imaging — for example, that a single fMRI scan can reveal our innermost
feelings — and with inflated claims about our understanding of the biological
basis of our higher mental processes.
Such
irritation has led a number of thoughtful people to declare that we can never
achieve a truly sophisticated understanding of the biological foundation of
complex mental activity.
In
fact, recent newspaper articles have argued that psychiatry is a “semi-science”
whose practitioners cannot base their treatment of mental disorders on the same
empirical evidence as physicians who treat disorders of the body can. The
problem for many people is that we cannot point to the underlying biological
bases of most psychiatric disorders. In fact, we are nowhere near understanding
them as well as we understand disorders of the liver or the heart.
But
this is starting to change.
No comments:
Post a Comment