Article Review

Posted by Winnie Melda on November 20th, 2018

Neuroscience research

Uttal, W (2001) The New Phrenology  Localizing Cognitive Processes  Limits in the Brain. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), at p. 208.

 Uttal in this book provides a critique of neuroimaging. He suggests that the quest of localizing the brain’s psychological functions is misguided yet it is the primary goal of research of neuroimaging. Utall (2001) notes that a considerable fMRI and PET localization amount confirms some things that are already well known, and he contrast this type of research with the research that aims to discover how the brain represents, computes, instantiates and encode the psychological process. As suggested the use of imagining constrains the theories explaining the mind-brain relations in testing and devising.

The concern is that functional brain imaging is not merely within localization or one that cannot test the psychological hypotheses. However, the concern is that the approach directs us to think about the function of the brain in the wrong way. First, we only have to focus on the subset of relevant information. It is a problem that Uttal says, ‘the mistaken idea is that when all the lesser peaks reduction to invisibility through arbitrary scaling, the remaining largest peak represents the specific cognitive processes in its sole locale (Uttal, 208).” Also, the approach invites us in framing the hypotheses within the wrong macroscopic analytical levels rather than its right microscopic level. In the end, it results in misdirected effort and attentions, and we fail to do what should.

 It is not easy to disagree with Uttal’s observation that in itself, localization is a goal that is scientifically questionable. However, many modern day neuroimaging types of research have another kind of objectives. The fMRI and PET methods in the early years were for imaging the brain processes with brain localizations had become well known as per the single cell recording and lesion studies in animals. Thus, the exercise gave a validation for new methods and had to be tested so that they produce the localizations under expectation (Uttal, 2001). After confirming the localizations as well as confidence in functional imaging ability to detect the activity of brain region increases.

Thus, using this method, researchers can investigate other unknown cases and the brain areas that can be recruited to perform a given psychological function and address questions that are not essentially about localization. However, still there are studies on localization that are still for publishing in the form of purely descriptive studies. However the functional neuro-imaging research functioning in the 21st century is not motivated through localization in the case of the old phrenology (Schultz, & Schultz, 2012).

 However, it is a new concept of new phrenology charge is for rejection since it derives from the neuroimaging methods exploiting other activation features alongside the location features. For instance, the adaptation paradigms use activity changes in the course of cognition and perception especially in the diminution in response to repeated operation and stimulus after reactivating the same set of neurons. It is because neurons adapt to the simulation and have a less intense reaction when only recently activated (Schultz, & Schultz, 2012).

Thus, the careful arranging the order and selecting them as per the stimuli order and measuring the preceding effect of a single stimulus with another in effect it causes the natural coding similarity in between the stimulus. Thus, when a researcher knows the nature of the representational similarity, he will also understand better the representations nature (Uttal, 208). Thus, by use of this method, the researcher will effectively distinguish the viewpoints that are dependent on the environmental location representations and the viewpoints with invariant representations (Schultz, & Schultz, 2012).

 The modern method of study psychology which are the non-phrenology do take advantage of the ability of neuroimaging to provide information about the state of the oval brain that constraints with the piecewise non-imaging approach and methods. These methods include the lesion and cell recording methods (Schultz, & Schultz, 2012). The functional connectivity analyzes show the subset areas with correlated activity showing that they are working together. Thus, this new method can pick out the functional areas of a network that can change depending on the conditions of a task and, therefore, places strong constraints on the organizational nature of the entire cognitive subsystems (Schultz, & Schultz, 2012).

References

Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2012). A history of modern psychology (10th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Press.

 Uttal, W. R (2001) The Phrenology and Localizing Cognitive Processes limitations in the Brain. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), at p. 208.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in best custom research papers if you need a similar paper you can place your order for custom college essay services.