
Why Brain Scans Are Not Always What They Seem - Vigier
https://www.braindecoder.com/bold-assumptions-why-brain-scans-are-not-always-what-they-seem-1069949099.html
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prefrontal
I am the author of the dead salmon study and even I am getting tired of
reading about it in the popular press. The original intent was to provide a
salient example as to why researchers should use proper statistics in their
studies. In the six years since we originally published the paper the
neuroimaging field has gotten much, much better at doing the right thing. Now,
the salmon is getting to be a tired cliche used to highlight how fMRI is
"flawed". Let it go...

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jacquesm
You can update your bio to include name/contact info and email if you want to.

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s3cur3
There's an insidious fallacy at play in a lot brain imaging studies. I've
heard it termed "neurorealism": the idea that something isn't real unless we
can point to an area of the brain that "lights up" when it happens. (And the
converse: any behavior we can associate with someone's brain "lighting up"
must be intimately linked to that behavior.)

It's tempting to look at the visible differences between, say the fMRI of a
psychopath and that of a normal person and say "oh, look, area x is clearly
different, so we've found the center of psycopathy!", but there are waaaaay
too many variables in play for that to be a valid inference.

The best neuroscientists know this is rubbish... but the press does not.

