tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post1118853792386432846..comments2024-03-09T09:06:35.288+00:00Comments on Notes from Two Scientific Psychologists: On why fMRI is bullshitAndrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-39853235397253620602016-03-08T12:26:20.304+00:002016-03-08T12:26:20.304+00:00Hi Jillian, thanks for stopping by.
I have calmed...Hi Jillian, thanks for stopping by.<br /><br />I have calmed down a little since I wrote this :) That said:<br /><br />I still think fMRI is a deeply problematic technique that leads people to conclude lots of things that aren't true, and that interpreting the data depends strongly on your theory of cognition in general in ways people often don't admit or even know.<br /><br />Because of this theory dependence, I think fMRI will remain problematic until we get our theories organised (which we continue to work on here in the blog and in papers). I also think neuroscientists need to be more explicit about the theories that are informing their interpretations: the way in which cognitive theories and neural data can inform and constrain each other is actually very complicated. <br /><br />I also stand by the fact that fMRI studies are often (not always, but often) very average behavioural studies taking place in a magnet. Stimulus construction, the facts of being in a bore etc all have major consequences for what the brain will do in response and losing control of that is kind of unacceptable, especially given how expensive this research is. <br /><br />I am less down on neuroscience these days because our developing work is finally finding ways to connect our theory to the operation of the brain and I feel better now we're finally able to make some predictions that might actually be testable. It means that I now have some specific reasons to believe that the tools can get used in a way I think will produce good answers because the questions will be better (even if we end up being wrong, our questions are better :)Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-43724486547573484652016-02-17T21:09:34.565+00:002016-02-17T21:09:34.565+00:00I just stumbled across this post, and although it ...I just stumbled across this post, and although it is 4.5 years later, I feel the need to comment.<br /><br />I am rather confused at your vehemence over fMRI. I was trained as a neuroscientist and use fMRI as a tool to study the brain. I often read papers and think that the authors are not clear in the theories behind why they are investigating something but that to me indicates that more rigorous science and methodology is at fault, not fMRI itself. I have also seen some terrible behavioral studies before, but that would not lead me to run screaming through the streets proclaiming that all behavioral researchers have no idea what they are doing. <br /><br />As someone who received a PhD in neuroscience, I learned about all aspects of the brain. Visual systems, neurons, that tricky, tricky biological motion. But fMRI research is performed by all types of scientists from all scientific backgrounds, and sure...not everyone who does this type of research comes from the same background and thus has the same skill set. That does not invalidate the research as a field. Jillian Hardeenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-54668824950663385182015-06-24T09:50:02.694+01:002015-06-24T09:50:02.694+01:00Gibson 1979 is the place to look.<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Ecological-Approach-Visual-Perception/dp/0898599598" rel="nofollow">Gibson 1979 is the place to look.</a>Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-63782630159814533632015-06-24T03:12:12.500+01:002015-06-24T03:12:12.500+01:00Thanks for your comments. I understand that 'G...Thanks for your comments. I understand that 'Gibson' is a good source of reference on this matter? Can you please refer me to one of his books or articles, for further research into this subject? Thanks John Robinson!John Robinsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04409996658987374061noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-90405382508763902182012-07-19T17:44:24.010+01:002012-07-19T17:44:24.010+01:00Psychology is trying to quantify qualitative data....Psychology is trying to quantify qualitative data. I read this article, paraphrasing "Researchers lose credibility due to methodology". Do I have a degree in psychology? (No)Curtisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-44833842042068799502011-04-26T17:11:36.939+01:002011-04-26T17:11:36.939+01:00One misremembered element doesn't make for con...One misremembered element doesn't make for considerable humiliation, although it was clearly an error and I did mean it when I apologised. It also doesn't really derail the point of this post. I don't argue from anecdote; this story was just an example I had of the point I was drawing. fMRI researchers, in general, have no clear theory of information and thus the results which emerge from their research are highly confused and prone to be interpreted in very odd ways. I stick by that.<br /><br />More relevantly, perhaps you might like to read <a href="http://psychsciencenotes.blogspot.com/2010/06/on-why-fmri-is-bullshit-even-when-youre.html" rel="nofollow">this later post</a> where I highlight that I am actually just deeply unimpressed by fMRI even when done by people I know and trust to do good science and who do, in fact, have a theory of information. <br /><br />Anonymous, if you look on the 'About Us' page you'll find links and information about me. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I am an expert in visual perception and it's role in the control of action, as well as being well trained in cognitive science from a good programme. I know enough to have an opinion about fMRI on a blog, I think. <br /><br />Feel free to point out where else I'm wrong, though, I'm happy to have the conversation if you have evidence you think I should see.Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-24127663318717765152011-04-26T03:42:31.428+01:002011-04-26T03:42:31.428+01:00Not at all. It is necessary to identify the real ...Not at all. It is necessary to identify the real "expert" here. Is it Michael Beauchamp (whose knowledge and life's work were both misrepresented in the blog) or Andrew Wilson (who wrote the blog trashing Mike's work and fMRI in general). The credentials (or identity) of anybody else is immaterial. Michael's credentials hold up.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-10559027183490074332011-04-21T20:17:48.269+01:002011-04-21T20:17:48.269+01:00Hiding behind 'Anonymous' while demanding ...Hiding behind 'Anonymous' while demanding the credentials of the blogger seems pretty weak...Gavin Buckinghamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08539613027114375642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-49668343591676642952011-04-20T21:47:14.287+01:002011-04-20T21:47:14.287+01:00BTW, we're aware of Mike's impressive work...BTW, we're aware of Mike's impressive work - he has the scientific kahunas to back him up. Let's see your body of work - a CV perhaps?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-29819963549405948832011-04-20T21:43:36.850+01:002011-04-20T21:43:36.850+01:00I would recommend reading advanced, or even introd...I would recommend reading advanced, or even introductory, sources in both cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology before blogging about this topic. Such rudimentary research would have saved ADW and others this considerable humiliation.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-33822904553628959642011-04-14T20:37:56.277+01:002011-04-14T20:37:56.277+01:00In that case I apologise; I clearly misremembered....In that case I apologise; I clearly misremembered. I'll edit in a note above.Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-68616468808340837342011-04-14T17:12:26.328+01:002011-04-14T17:12:26.328+01:00The post claims that after a talk on Indiana Unive...The post claims that after a talk on Indiana University (on February 10th, 2004), <br />"My PhD advisor [asked] had he not thought to use point-light displays? The fMRI wunderkind had not, because he didn't know what those were."<br />I have posted the slides from this talk at<br />http://openwetware.org/images/c/cd/IUTalk.pdf<br />The second section of the talk (slides 48 - 57) discuss my point-light experiments in some detail, including crediting Johannson, the first to use point-light displays for psychological experiments. My slides demonstrate how we created our point-light displays using the Vicon motion capture system in the NIH Clinical Center and summarizing the key points of my Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience paper of the year before:<br />Beauchamp, M.S., Lee, K.E., Haxby, J.V., and Martin, A.: FMRI responses to video and point-light displays of moving humans and manipulable objects. J Cogn Neurosci 15: 991-1001, 2003<br />available at<br />http://openwetware.org/wiki/Beauchamp:Publications<br />and my Neuron papers, available at the same URL.Michael Beauchamphttp://openwetware.org/wiki/Beauchampnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-6725825394154458052011-04-14T09:51:49.080+01:002011-04-14T09:51:49.080+01:00Hi Michael
Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for...Hi Michael<br /><br />Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for the reference. <br /><br />I just flicked through the paper, and it's a lot tighter in it's design and interpretation than the data you presented in the talk. There's nothing in the paper about biological vs. non-biological motion, for example, the stimuli are talked about sensibly in terms of their motion properties. <br /><br />So that's good stuff, and I'm glad that I'm wrong about the point-light displays. In my defence, though, when Geoff asked you about point light displays you did say you didn't know about them; clearly just a misunderstanding but it was all I knew about you at the time. Plus your talk was about the neural correlates of biological vs. non-biological motion perception, and you described your tool stimuli as non-biological motion, which is incorrect, so I stand by that.<br /><br />A quick poke around, and it looks like the data are the result of Beauchamp et al (2002); is that right? If so it might be worth me reading that in detail, to see if I can still identify the problems I'm worried about. <br /><br />Beauchamp, M. S., Lee, K. E., Haxby, J. V., & Martin, A. (2002). Parallel visual motion processing streams for manipulable objects and human movements. Neuron, 34, 149–159. <a href="http://psychology.stanford.edu/~jlm/pdfs/Martin_Neuron.pdf" rel="nofollow">Download</a>Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-54767930912683236922011-04-13T23:12:42.926+01:002011-04-13T23:12:42.926+01:00As the "wunderkind" mentioned in this po...As the "wunderkind" mentioned in this post, I feel compelled to point out a factual inaccuracy. The post claims <br />"My PhD advisor [asked] had he not thought to use point-light displays? The fMRI wunderkind had not, because he didn't know what those were."<br />For evidence to the contrary, please see<br /><br />Beauchamp, M.S., Lee, K.E., Haxby, J.V., and Martin, A.: FMRI responses to video and point-light displays of moving humans and manipulable objects. J Cogn Neurosci 15: 991-1001, 2003Michael Beauchamphttp://openwetware.org/wiki/Beauchamp:Publicationsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-61533490758580220782010-04-02T18:25:17.465+01:002010-04-02T18:25:17.465+01:00We will publish these discussions in a special iss...We will publish these discussions in a special issue of EBR or something. Old school style.Gavin Buckinghamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08539613027114375642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-67814757831991392012010-04-02T17:02:18.948+01:002010-04-02T17:02:18.948+01:00Ha!
Feel free to keep going, these are all thing ...Ha!<br /><br />Feel free to keep going, these are all thing I need to think about.Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-60334644461323013812010-04-02T15:34:56.067+01:002010-04-02T15:34:56.067+01:00Whoops! Gender change!Whoops! Gender change!Gavin Buckinghamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08539613027114375642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-7176274492564741072010-04-02T15:33:24.047+01:002010-04-02T15:33:24.047+01:00Indeedy! I'll stop filling up this thread, an...Indeedy! I'll stop filling up this thread, and let you get on with the next topic though :)Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05015031733446085691noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-1186333482197842972010-04-02T11:08:16.926+01:002010-04-02T11:08:16.926+01:00Actually I don't think that evolution has allo...Actually I don't think that evolution has allowed such a system a toehold. I quite firmly reject the idea that just because you can get a response from the system implies that the system is built to respond to that stimulus. I'll think about this some more and flesh it out, but the assumption that 'the system provided a response under these impoverished conditions' means 'the system uses this variable we isolated in normal activity' is quite flawed, I think, and comes from a rather old school, linear way of thinking about this. That's not a brilliant answer, though, so I'll think some more.<br /><br />Gibson very much talks about how motion is not simply something that happens but is fundamental to vision. He knew very well that the eyes are in constant motion (and that they are in a head which is also always moving, etc) and recognised that this was only a problem if you assumed the movement wasn't part of the system's normal operation. <br /><br />Representations enhancing perception: my point is always to try and show that this is never necessary. If viewing conditions aren't perfect then you actually suffer the consequences, or move so as to improve the conditions, etc. But if you want to tell a story about representations enhancing perception, you need to be able to tell a story about when and how the representation is applied. What about viewing something moving behind a picket fence: it moves in and out of view but you can track it - are you alternating perception-representation-perception? (No, you are using perception, because perception does not merely happen in the instant, but that's a whole other thing).<br /><br />The 2 visual systems stuff would be more interesting if a) people could decide, for principled reasons, on what the two systems handle, and b) why you would ever want to separate function anyway? Every single time I hear the 2 visual system story, the two streams are supposedly responsible for different pairs of tasks; it's rubbish. It's information, not anatomy, that matters (as Geoff and colleagues have recently shown:<br /><br />Bingham, G.P. & Lind, M. (2008). Large continuous perspective transformations are necessary and sufficient for perception of metric shape. Perception & Psychophysics, 70(3), 524-540. <br /><br />plus Young's dissertation, unpublished so far I think but she only defended a few months ago). I'll blog about this later, Geoff is visiting and talking about this data).<br /><br />Lots more topics to talk about, clearly :)Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-26393787654216692582010-04-02T09:40:37.268+01:002010-04-02T09:40:37.268+01:001. It seems to me evolution has already allowed su...1. It seems to me evolution has already allowed such a system to get a toe hold. The question is whether we use that system all the time, non?<br /><br />2. Yes, but this is not the movement Gibson talks about as being so vital for visual perception. And, given that you do make these eye movements in the scanner... I guess the point i was trying to make here is that you can complete pretty much any perceptual task within the scanner, lying down and static. I would acknowledge that your brain's solution to the particular problem may not generalize to other situations where the incoming information differs (with movements etc), but enough researchers use perceptual tasks that simulate movement on the retina with the correct geometries to simulate the visual gain of movement. <br /><br />3. How many situations is the system operating under perfect circumstances? Very few times, I would suggest. Of course, perfect is relative to what evolution has defined it to be for us, but there seems to be enough variability in our visual environments to make me think that, broadly speaking, what works in one situation will probably be what is working in another situation - a solution broad enough to cope with all contingencies (representations enhancing perception).<br /><br />and, i suppose if i did want to pitch this in a 2 visual streams kinda way, i'd say that the dorsal stream, immediate action sorta tasks are processed in an ecological sorta way, while ventral stream style tasks are optionally not processed in that sorta way. But surely someone must have thrown that dichotomy up somewhere along the way...Gavin Buckinghamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08539613027114375642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-59693481821923432232010-04-02T00:51:38.876+01:002010-04-02T00:51:38.876+01:00I see, I see. Interesting.
Well, as I said, I tho...I see, I see. Interesting. <br />Well, as I said, I thought psychology had that figured out already :P<br /><br />I'll try to get that book you recommended, I hope it's for the psychology handicapped.Eduardo Garzahttp://person.au.dk/en/eduardo.garza@ki.au.dknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-46254420508929768232010-04-01T22:10:19.070+01:002010-04-01T22:10:19.070+01:00I'm saying, what is it about the light you fla...I'm saying, what is it about the light you flashed that made the BOLD signal do one thing rather than another? If you can't describe ahead of time what is different about the light, you can't interpret any difference.<br /><br />On a related note:<br />http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/04/01/scientists-discover-gene-and-part-of-brain-that-make-people-gullible/Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-50223680303701340992010-04-01T20:46:14.427+01:002010-04-01T20:46:14.427+01:00I think I see what you mean, where you are saying ...I think I see what you mean, where you are saying that they (fMRI researchers) don't understand the stimuli or how it's perceived.<br /><br />From my point of view, if I tell a person to push a button inside the MR scanner every 2 seconds for 2 minutes, my theory is that I will see a significant BOLD signal in the Motor cortex (premotor probably as well).<br />If I flash a light from time to time, I expect to see a significant BOLD signal in visual cortex and so on.<br /><br />So when you say fMRI is bullshit, do you mean that my assumptions in these cases are wrong?Eduardo Garzahttp://person.au.dk/en/eduardo.garza@ki.au.dknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-13606458842192526192010-04-01T10:03:03.080+01:002010-04-01T10:03:03.080+01:00fMRI researchers don't have a theory of what t...fMRI researchers don't have a theory of what they are pumping into the system (actually psychology doesn't, because they haven't embraced Gibson yet). If you don't have a theory to describe accurately what you are pumping in (in terms of the stimuli) you cannot interpret what happens next.Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16732977871048876430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9192597712746432631.post-62476545486340911252010-03-31T23:19:14.135+01:002010-03-31T23:19:14.135+01:00Very interesting points here.
I'm still tryin...Very interesting points here.<br /><br />I'm still trying to understand your view on the subject.<br /><br />As a Medical Doctor I read in school about, for example, the motor cortex and it's spatial distribution, then when I encounter that hand movement can be "visualized" in the fMRI, the conclusion for me is that fMRI is a tool that can show how the motor cortex doing something.<br /><br />However, saying that the change in blood flow in certain areas of the brain during a task is equal to the "mental representation", seems far out to me and even dangerous (like phrenology).<br /><br />What do you mean with "fMRI lacks theory of information"?Eduardo Garzahttp://person.au.dk/en/eduardo.garza@ki.au.dknoreply@blogger.com