The Brain Does That? So What?
In a column earlier this year, Psychology Today contributor Nate Kornell wrote about his annoyance with the excitement over findings that "the brain does that." Kornell's response to findings that "the brain does that" is a bit of an intellectual "duh!" Or, closer to his own words, the response is more of an exasperated "Of course it does!" And I have to admit I share his annoyance ... to a certain degree. So what if researchers "discover" there are underlying neural mechanisms of the placebo effect? Does this make the placebo effect any more "real"? (Or, for that matter, any less real?) And, if we discover that reading causes activation in the brain, does that give us a meaningful reason to engage in more reading (as was argued in a recent guardian article )? (See the Onion's take here and here .) As Kornell puts it, "every mental process is represented in the brain." Thus, according to Kornell if there i...