Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:32:50.337Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

MUST YOU REALLY HAVE YOUR HEAD EXAMINED? – NEUROIMAGING AND ITS PLACE IN MODERN-DAY PSYCHIATRY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2010

Get access

Extract

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’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

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. 69CrossRefGoogle 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. 6267CrossRefGoogle 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.