No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2010
If recent reports in the media are anything to go by, we now know why some people crave chocolate, why teenagers tend to be moody and – most impressively of all, perhaps – which parties voters will opt for in elections. Findings like these, we are assured, have the backing of science. We owe them to advances in brain-scanning technology that have enabled researchers to pinpoint the brain's ‘pleasure centre’ or ‘thinking area’, and so to achieve mind-reading powers that have hitherto been the stuff of fantasy. There is even some site in the brain that might be called a ‘God spot’.
1 Fodor, J., ‘Let your brain alone’, London Review of Books, 30 September 1999Google Scholar.
2 Kendell, R.E., ‘The next 25 years’, British Journal of Psychiatry 176 (2000), pp. 6–9CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
3 The Economist, ‘Who do you think you are? A survey of the brain’ (special supplement), 23 December 2006.
4 Cacioppo, J., Bernston, G. and Nusbaum, H., ‘Neuroimaging as a new tool in the toolbox of psychological science’, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17 (2008): pp. 62–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Kumar, A. and Ajilore, O., ‘Magnetic resonance imaging and late-life depression: potential biomarkers in the era of personalized medicine’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 165 (2008): pp. 166–8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
6 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations. Trans. Anscombe, G.E.M.. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953) §281Google Scholar.
7 Bennett, M.R. and Hacker, P.M.S.Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 3Google Scholar.
8 Jaspers, K., General Psychopathology. 2 vols. Trans. Hoenig, J. and Hamilton, M.W.. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, [1913] 1997), pp. 769–70Google Scholar.