Cognitive Neuroscience is a FAKE science

Brain awareness video contest 2011 SfN - The Society for Neuroscience
What is Cognitive Neuroscience ?
Cognitive Neuroscience is a pseudoscience and more a branch of psychiatry than neurology. I blame it on "the decade of the brain" which pushed through the importance of brain research and now we have loads of people with qualifications in a fake science. I feel sorry for the poeple who studied it.
Even Thinkbox the television marketing body for the main UK commercial broadcasters is starting to use it .Tess Alps CEO, Thinkbox here's there link
http://www.thinkbox.tv/server/?search_word=neuroscience&change=SearchResults

In 1845 Wilhelm Griesinger (psychiatrist / neurologist) declared mental illnesses are brain disorders. His idea inspired lots of research in to brain pathology and since then thousands of mental patients have had their brains examined on autopsy in search of a biological cause for mental illness. Today in 2009 with the CT, MRI & PET scanner still no biological proof of mental illness. The only logical explanation is that the problem isn't in the brian.
Tags include: Baroness Susan Greenfield, Prof Gemma Calvert, neuro marketing, Nidal Malik Hasan, BBC2 horizon why do we talk

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• brain
• awareness
• video
• contest
• 2011
• SfN
• cognitive
• neuroscience
• neuromarketing
• pseudoscience
• neuro
• marketing
• thinkbox
• psychiatry
• psychology
• Tess
• Alps
• mental
• illness
• bipolar
• disorder
• prof
• gemma
• calvert
• chipmunka
• publishing
• alessandro
• prian
• cake
• theory
• fake
• science
• neurofeedback
• neurology
• medicine
• baroness
• susan
• greenfield
• facebook
• damaging
• brains

[caketheory]

Anyone interested in the history of how modern day neuroscience developed. I've put a video on the subject in my favourite list called "Phrenology part 1" which everybody might like.

I recommend both parts and you'll see that phrenology (a fake science) led lobotomy (a fake science) which led to cognitive neuroscience (in my opinion a fake science).

[sirpantsalot11]

lolwut. The shit spewing from your mouth is absolutely amazing. So you say that you will allow epilepsy to be called a "real disease," but your argument states that the behavioral symptoms of the disease, like impaired learning and memory, have no neural substrate. You realize that doesn't make sense, right? So these symptoms just happen to occur in [almost all] cases of epilepsy, but they have nothing to do with the physical changes in the brain?

[caketheory]

@sirpantsalot11 Thanks for the compliment haha but there is a biological test for epilepsy, the EEG. If this shows an epileptiform discharge during a clinical seizure, then the diagnosis is formally established.

What I'm trying to say is that bipolar, schizophrenia and most psychiatric illnesses are not real because there is no biological test. Also I don't like the way neuroscience is being used to justify the biological model in psychiatry.

[sirpantsalot11]

@caketheory Your argument is then a false dilemma. Saying that something is not a "real disease" because we cannot detect its existence is an appeal to ignorance fallacy. In the 18th century, doctors couldn't detect epilepsy because EEG technology didn't exist. Does that mean it wasn't a real disease then? If doctors are eventually able to see physical changes in the brain that result from psychiatric illnesses, will they then be real diseases?

[caketheory]

@sirpantsalot11 In the 18th century we never had the CT, MRI, PET scanner etc. Today we have and if you can't find a disease with all these modern machines its probably because there isn't one.

So your saying its OK to give antipsychotic medication for a dopamine imbalance in schizophrenia when the patient hasn't even had a test? You wouldn't give somebody insulin or chemotherapy unless you were sure they needed it.

[caketheory]

Anyone interested in the history of how modern day neuroscience developed. I've put a video on the subject in my favourite list called "Phrenology part 1" which everybody might like.

I recommend both parts and you'll see that phrenology (a fake science) led lobotomy (a fake science) which led to cognitive neuroscience (in my opinion a fake science).

[BigPrisonBitch]

@sirpantsalot11 Hippocrates, the Father Of Medicine wrote that IF THERE ARE NO MARKS, NO BRUISES, NO 'LESIONS,' NO TRAUMA THERE WILL BE NO INTERVENTION. H meant to leave it ALONE. What part of that don't you understand? If you cannot objectively observe something, do NOTHING about what you IMAGINE [SUBJECTIVE]. If it cannot be observed objectively, it is NOT to be treated. So, do not treat a mood, it cannot be tested for OBJECTIVELY. A mood is NOT a disease. You are from USA? FOS

[Geebsee]

@caketheory

Phrenology was a 19th century approach to localisation of brain functioning. While phrenology itself was wrong, the modular approach to the brain was correct. Lobotomy was a medical procedure, not a science, and did what it said on the label. It was cruel, barbaric, but not "fake" in the sense that homeopathy is fake. Lastly, cognitive neuroscience arose with Gazzaniga's work on split brain patients and is a computational approach to biology, which has turned out to be substantiated

[Keshikun]

@caketheory There are several physiological brain anomalies linked to schizophrenia, Increased ventricles (a sign of atrophy), change in neural density and abnormalities in metabolic rates in several brain areas (prefrontal cortex is consistently smaller and less active in patients with schizophrenia compared to controls). Our understanding of the disease keeps increasing. Genetic tests will be able to tell who is at risk, but gene-environment interaction is ultimately what determines who getsit

[sirpantsalot11]

@caketheory Again, your argument is a fallacy of appeal to ignorance, which makes it pretty weak. New techniques to study the brain are being introduced all the time (MEG is a good example of this).

Also, there is a test for schizophrenia based on behavior, which is the best we can do right now. I don't agree with randomly handing out medications, but when a patient's life is disrupted, medication in combination with other therapies have much success in improving quality of life.