Brains On Purpose™

Warnings about brain scans, empathy, and oxytocin

With the mass popularization of neuroscience in many arenas, including conflict resolution, one hears much dumbing down of how the brain works. I read an excellent blog post today at Lucid Thoughts titled fMRI and "locationism": Something Old, Something New and wanted to point it out to you since it explains a factor in this dumbing down. Blogger Steve Genco calls it "locationism.'

Locationism is when one describes an activity in the brain as if we know exactly where that activity occurs, i.e., giving it a location. From Lucid Thoughts:

I haven’t picked on the fMRI folks for awhile, but was inspired today by a new post over at the excellent neuroscience-of-language blog Talking Brains entitled “Functional brain imaging, it’s not always where you think it is.”  And that reminded me that I also want to write something about an excellent article in Scientific American Mind from about a year ago entitled “Five Ways Brain Scans Mislead Us.”

I’m taking this opportunity for a “two-fer” because both these items draw attention to a central dogma of fMRI interpretation that is particularly prevalent in the popular media.  I call it

Which of these do you like best? I am trying to decide on an image for CARVE

As many of you know, I typically use an acronym in my training programs. The acronym represents what we try to promote and increase in conflict situations, as well as in our lives.

The acronym in CARVE Disputes Model™ stands for

C - Curiosity
A - Attention
R - reflection
V - Value
E - Ensemble

And below are the images. I have sent these out to a number of friends and colleagues; two of these are leading significantly in the voting. Which do you prefer? Thanks for your help.

 

Contemplative Practices for Lawyers: Retreat in Santa Fe on November 13 - 15

Click for all the details.

On a related note, a recent post at idealawg: Colorado Contemplative Lawyers Society: "Meditating Lawyer No Oxymoron".

Image credit: ms.kdat.