Hastings Cent Rep. 2014 Mar-Apr;Spec No:S19-30. doi: 10.1002/hast.295.
Since the mid-1980s, psychologists and neuroscientists have used brain imaging to test hypotheses about human thought processes and their neural instantiation. In just three decades, functional neuroimaging has been transformed from a crude clinical tool to a widely used research method for understanding the human brain and mind. Such rapidly achieved success is bound to evoke skepticism. A degree of skepticism toward new methods and ideas is both inevitable and useful in any field. It is especially valuable in a science as young as cognitive neuroscience and its even younger siblings, social and affective neuroscience. Healthy skepticism encourages us to check our assumptions, recognize the limitations of our methods, and proceed thoughtfully. Skepticism itself, however, also must be examined. In this article, I review the most commonly voiced criticisms of functional neuroimaging. In the spirit of healthy skepticism, I will critically examine these criticisms themselves. Each contains at least a kernel of truth, although I will argue that in some cases the kernel has been over extended in ways that are inaccurate or misleading.
自 20 世纪 80 年代中期以来，心理学家和神经科学家利用脑成像技术来验证关于人类思维过程及其神经实现的假设。在短短三十年的时间里，功能神经影像学已经从一种粗糙的临床工具转变为理解人类大脑和思维的广泛应用的研究方法。如此迅速取得的成功必然会引起怀疑。在任何领域，对新方法和新思想的一定程度的怀疑既是不可避免的，也是有用的。在认知神经科学及其更年轻的兄弟社会和情感神经科学这样的年轻科学中，这种怀疑尤其有价值。健康的怀疑鼓励我们检查自己的假设，认识到我们方法的局限性，并深思熟虑地进行。然而，怀疑本身也必须受到审查。在本文中，我回顾了对功能神经影像学最常见的批评。本着健康怀疑的精神，我将批判性地审视这些批评本身。每一个批评都至少包含一个真相内核，尽管我将争辩说，在某些情况下，这个内核已经被不准确或误导地过度扩展了。
