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The pernicious danger of cortical brain maps, 2022, Benjamin Yost Hayden

Discussion in 'Other health news and research' started by CRG, Sep 19, 2022.

  1. CRG

    CRG Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    The pernicious danger of cortical brain maps
    Benjamin Yost Hayden

    The parcellation of the primate cerebral cortex into numbered regions, based on cytoarchitecture, began with the pioneering research of neuroanatomist Kobrinian Brodmann.

    While the borders between regions have changed somewhat, and in some cases continue to be disputed, the idea of dividing the cortex into distinct numbered areas has become central to the goal of understanding brain function.

    And indeed, areal maps do provide a good starting point for functional parcellation. It is obvious, for example, that visual area V1 has a different function than primary motor cortex.

    However, as with anything good, one can take things too far. Indeed, cortical areas, while useful, have several pernicious side effects for neuroscientists interested in function, especially in prefrontal cortex.

    https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.06740

    full .pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.06740
     
    Hutan, Sean, RedFox and 1 other person like this.
  2. CRG

    CRG Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    " Antimodularism and The Entangled Brain Ultimately, my argument is that the existence of brain maps poses a danger to neuroscience because they motivate research practices that reify those maps.

    In a recent book, The Entangled Brain, Pessoa argues that we cannot understand the brain from the standard divide-and-conquer approach (Pessoa, 2022). That is because the brain is a complex entangled system. For example, Pessoa argues that “we need to dissolve boundaries within the brain.”

    Ultimately, Pessoa takes aim at a set of received ideas about the brain that include a modularity in cognitive function and in neuroanatomy (see also Pessoa et al., 2022)."
     
  3. Jonathan Edwards

    Jonathan Edwards Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    The brain isn't entangled. Neural events are classically determinate and it is their independence, or lack of correlation, that gives them informational value.

    The failure of a modular function approach lies simply in the fact that each function connects two variably distant areas. So function was never in one place or another.

    This is the old false debate between distributed and localised function that has a perfectly sensible solution if you follow the actual neuroanatomy.
     
    FMMM1, merylg, Sean and 8 others like this.
  4. bobbler

    bobbler Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    hmm. Not had the time or the brain to do more than a cursory read. But what I can't help but note is the examples/functions chosen for this 'entangled brain' argument: 'attention' and 'economic theory' (which has a model of evaluation, comparison, monitoring and selection) are pretty different to the 'for' the areal: motor cortical regions and auditory cortex identification enabling prosthetic devices.

    For a start attention has a lot of different 'what ifs' and context to it, meaning it might be more complicated to look for because they haven't defined it right. Economic theory as it has been put down for their subject is also a model that is used in marketing, psychology business only as a starter for ten - because experiential, post-hoc justification, symbolic factors and all sorts of other things have come in with new models. And people are correct to suspect that individual decisions aren't always going to be 'just one' of these, or that this model is cleanly correct in what it involves.

    The Rangel (2008) reference for this has a new 2022 paper which still only references Pavlovian, habit and goal-directed (although at least towards the end they discuss moving forward is an issue as 'at least 3 valuation systems are at work fighting over control of the decision-making process'). Though seems rather confidence in 'the next 5 years and beyond' part that various new technologies will provide great strides: https://www.researchgate.net/public...based_decision_making_Nat_Rev_Neuro_9_545-556


    I'm not sure how Cohen and Maunsell 2009 looking for a different question makes the argument for areal being wrong. Just that they need to up their game in their methodology of questions and isolating complex tasks into a task that will be the same across persons better, and to triangulate by coming at things from different angles. Those working in the motor area of psychology for example have mapped the forward and backward processing involved with proprioception and movements well specifically by using and studying those with different disabilities in order to better understand what processes are involved with what: where the actual task begins and ends, or 'splits'.

    Not the brain area concept being the issue but the definition of what is a task. And the 'tangle' being due to someone being too quick to get going on the machine bit without doing the homework on knowing what you are going to task people with is what you think it is. It takes time, and it takes clever plan of working at it from different angles to get there and understand the actual tasks involved with what you think is 'an area'. Seems quite a jump to go with the 'tangled brain' over looking at the models/theories being the issue/not worked through enough?
     

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