Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience

215 Pages·2013·1.7 MB·English

by  Sally Satel

More Advance Praise for Brainwashed
“An authoritative, fascinating argument for the centrality of mind in what,
doubtless prematurely, has been called the era of the brain.”
—Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac
“Brainwashed provides an engaging and wonderfully lucid tour of the many
areas in which the progress and applications of neuroscience are currently being
overstated and oversold. Some of the hyping of neuroscience appears fairly
harmless, but more than a little of it carries potential for real damage—especially
when it promotes erroneous ideas about addiction and criminal behavior. The
book combines clearheaded analysis with telling examples and anecdotes,
making it a pleasure to read.”
—Hal Pashler, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science,
University of California, San Diego
“Satel and Lilienfeld have produced a remarkably clear and important discussion
of what today’s brain science can and cannot deliver for society. As a
neuroscientist, I confess that I also enjoyed their persuasive skewering of
hucksters whose misuse of technology in the courtroom and elsewhere is
potentially damaging not only to justice but also to the public understanding of
science.”
—Dr. Steven E. Hyman, Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research
at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Former Director of the National
Institute of Mental Health
“There is a widespread belief that brain science is the key to understanding
humanity and that imaging will X-ray our minds, revealing why we buy things
and whether we are telling the truth and answering questions about addiction,
criminal responsibility, and free will. Brainwashed is a beautifully written, lucid
dissection of these exaggerated claims, informed by a profound knowledge of
current neuroscience. It is essential reading for anyone who wants a balanced
assessment of what neuroscience can and cannot tell us about ourselves.”
—Raymond Tallis, author of Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the
Misrepresentation of Humanity
BRAINWASHED
BRAINWASHED
The Seductive Appeal of
Mindless Neuroscience
Sally Satel and
Scott O. Lilienfeld
BASIC BOOKS
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York
Copyright © 2013 by Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld Published by Basic Books,
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A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-465-03786-5 (e-book) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to the memory of
James Q. Wilson—scholar, gentleman, naturalist.
CONTENTS
Introduction:
Losing Our Minds in the Age of Brain Science
CHAPTER ONE
This Is Your Brain on Ahmadinejad: Or What Is Brain Imaging?
CHAPTER TWO
The Buyologist Is In: The Rise of Neuromarketing
CHAPTER THREE
Addiction and the Brain-Disease Fallacy
CHAPTER FOUR
The Telltale Brain: Neuroscience and Deception
CHAPTER FIVE
My Amygdala Made Me Do It: The Trials of Neurolaw
CHAPTER SIX
The Future of Blame: Neuroscience and Moral Responsibility
EPILOGUE
Mind over Gray Matter
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
INTRODUCTION
Losing Our Minds in the Age of Brain Science
YOU’VE SEEN THE HEADLINES: This is your brain on love. Or God. Or
envy. Or happiness. And they’re reliably accompanied by articles boasting
pictures of color-drenched brains—scans capturing Buddhist monks meditating,
addicts craving cocaine, and college sophomores choosing Coke over Pepsi. The
media—and even some neuroscientists, it seems—love to invoke the neural
foundations of human behavior to explain everything from the Bernie Madoff
financial fiasco to slavish devotion to our iPhones, the sexual indiscretions of
politicians, conservatives’ dismissal of global warming, and even an obsession
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with self-tanning.
Brains are big on campus, too. Take a map of any major university, and you
can trace the march of neuroscience from research labs and medical centers into
schools of law and business and departments of economics and philosophy. In
recent years, neuroscience has merged with a host of other disciplines, spawning
such new areas of study as neurolaw, neuroeconomics, neurophilosophy,
neuromarketing, and neurofinance. Add to this the birth of neuroaesthetics,
neurohistory, neuroliterature, neuromusicology, neuropolitics, and
neurotheology. The brain has even wandered into such unlikely redoubts as
English departments, where professors debate whether scanning subjects’ brains
as they read passages from Jane Austen novels represents (a) a fertile inquiry
into the power of literature or (b) a desperate attempt to inject novelty into a
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field that has exhausted its romance with psychoanalysis and postmodernism.
Clearly, brains are hot. Once the largely exclusive province of
neuroscientists and neurologists, the brain has now entered the popular