{"id":126707,"date":"2021-08-24T17:24:21","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T00:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/mental-phenomena-dont-map-into-the-brain-as-expected"},"modified":"2021-08-24T17:24:21","modified_gmt":"2021-08-25T00:24:21","slug":"mental-phenomena-dont-map-into-the-brain-as-expected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/mental-phenomena-dont-map-into-the-brain-as-expected","title":{"rendered":"Mental Phenomena Don\u2019t Map Into the Brain as Expected"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Neuroscientists are the cartographers of the brain\u2019s diverse domains and territories \u2014 the features and activities that define them, the roads and highways that connect them, and the boundaries that delineate them. Toward the front of the brain, just behind the forehead, is the prefrontal cortex, celebrated as the seat of judgment. Behind it lies the motor cortex, responsible for planning and coordinating movement. To the sides: the temporal lobes, crucial for memory and the processing of emotion. Above them, the somatosensory cortex; behind them, the visual cortex.<\/p>\n

Not only do researchers often depict the brain and its functions much as mapmakers might draw nations on continents, but they do so \u201cthe way old-fashioned mapmakers\u201d did, according to Lisa Feldman Barrett<\/a>, a psychologist at Northeastern University. \u201cThey parse the brain in terms of what they\u2019re interested in psychologically or mentally or behaviorally,\u201d and then they assign the functions to different networks of neurons \u201cas if they\u2019re Lego blocks, as if there are firm boundaries there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a brain map with neat borders is not just oversimplified \u2014 it\u2019s misleading. \u201cScientists for over 100 years have searched fruitlessly for brain boundaries between thinking, feeling, deciding, remembering, moving and other everyday experiences,\u201d Barrett said. A host of recent neurological studies further confirm that these mental categories \u201care poor guides for understanding how brains are structured or how they work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neuroscientists are the cartographers of the brain\u2019s diverse domains and territories \u2014 the features and activities that define them, the roads and highways that connect them, and the boundaries that delineate them. Toward the front of the brain, just behind the forehead, is the prefrontal cortex, celebrated as the seat of judgment. Behind it lies [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}