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Mirror neuron flapdoodle: Neo-phrenology enters the empathy market

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http://www.drb.ie/essays/compassion-empathy-flapdoodle

EXCERPT: Phrenology was the bizarre belief that one could determine personality and intellectual ability by examination of the contours of the skull. [...] The contemporary equivalent of phrenology is functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). [...] Academic psychologists, who had hitherto been low in the pecking order of neuroscience, thought fMRI might give them scientific credibility, and even recognition by the general public.

[...] “Neurobollocks” -- as this new phrenology came to be labelled by its detractors -- has infiltrated economics, criminology, theology, literary criticism, education, sociology and politics: the American writer Matthew Crawford described fMRI as “a fast-acting solvent of the critical faculties”. Many cautious, reticent neuroscientists, however, are painfully aware of its limitations. The neuroscientist David Poeppel observed that “we still don’t understand how the brain recognizes something as basic as a straight line”.

Empathy is the latest target of this neo-phrenology. As well as the obligatory fMRI-based neuroanatomy, all contemporary meditations on empathy contain earnest accounts of mirror neurons, described as “the most hyped concept in neuroscience”. [...] outlandish claims have been made for these neurons, particularly by the Indian-American neuroscientist VS Ramachandran, who believes these mirror neurons are responsible for empathy, language, even civilisation.

A sobering review of mirror neurones written by British neuroscientists JM. Kilner and RN Lemon [...] concluded that we can’t extrapolate findings from monkey studies to humans, and furthermore, we’re not absolutely sure that these cells exist in humans, and even if they do, we’re not sure what their function is. These doubts haven’t remotely impeded the establishment of the new popular science orthodoxy that mirror neurons are what make us human and empathetic. Neurobollocks has escaped from the laboratory and is now the rickety foundation for popular, and populist, books by writers such as Jonah Lehrer, Malcolm Gladwell and many others....

MORE: http://www.drb.ie/essays/compassion-empathy-flapdoodle
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