I often read books that other people recommend. This book was a recommendation from my supervisor. However, while he mentioned this book as an interesting piece, he said that he disagreed with the author. I was curious to find out what the author’s stance was. It turned out that I agree, but with the author, not with the supervisor. Well... The book is “Neuromythologie: Eine Streitschrift gegen die Deutungsmacht der Hirnforschung” (Neuromythology: sharp criticism of the interpretive power of brain research) by Felix Hasler. 

As the title suggests, the author is a neuro-critic. Each chapter of the book attacks a particular sub-field of neuroscience, such as imaging techniques, mental pharmacology, reductionism and determinism, and neuro-enhancement.

Neuroimaging is every method that scientists use to measure brain activity. These methods are magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), positron emission tomography (PET), and others. The main criticism of many neuroimaging methods is that neuroscientists don’t know in detail what is being measured. For instance, fMRI measures blood flow in the brain. It is assumed that when neurons become active, they require more “food”, and hence the blood oxygen in the area of activity will decrease. Thus, fMRI measures brain activity only indirectly. On top of that, the interpretation of activity, which is done by a scientist, is not free from storytelling with a lot of imagination.

One prominent example from the book is the fMRI experiment concerning approval of presidential candidates in the USA in the 2008 elections. Photos of Hillary Clinton activated the anterior cingulate cortex (as measured with fMRI) in voters who said they didn't actually plan to vote for her. It was interpreted as an internal struggle against impulses to like the candidate. Conversely, Barack Obama photos and videos didn't trigger any strong reactions in participants—neither positive nor negative, from which it followed that he needed to do some work to actually appeal to the votes.

Some scientists create from their research click-baity stories that are only barely supported by the data, probably because they are driven by the desire for media attention. While others are driven by the desire to earn money. Those are scientists who work for pharmacological companies (let’s be fare, not all of them are like this). There is a thin line between just complaints about the pharma industry and conspiracy theories, but the author provides some statistics that are unsettling. For example, psychiatrists prescribe drugs much more often than in the past: in 1977, only 36% of consultations included prescriptions; in 2002, it was more than 90%. Another example: consultations for bipolar disorder in children and adolescents increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2002 (for adults, the increase also happened but by 1.85-fold). However, it seems that the causes of the increased reliance on drugs can only be partially attributed to clever pharma-industry marketing campaigns.

Another important factor for the increase in drug prescriptions is the reductionism that spread out in the scientific society, as well as among laypeople. Reductionism about the psyche means that consciousness and other phenomena can be reduced to the electrical and chemical activities of our neurons. As a consequence, when some of the neuronal electrical and chemical activities go awry (as in a mental disorder), the brain can be repaired by the changing electrical and chemical substances. However, reductionism so far is a philosophical theory, not an empirically proven fact.

The author continues his critique of reductionism in a chapter about free will, where he discusses Libet’s experiments. Benjamin Libet asked his participants to press the button without preparation and report the time when they made a decision to press. It turned out that participants were making a decision to move approximately 200 ms before the movement. However, the brain activity started 1.5 seconds before the movement. Libet’s conclusion was that humans don’t have free will because the brain had decided to move long before the participant’s consciousness had decided. Moreover, after deciding, the brain fed to the consciousness the feeling of willing. The author discusses several issues with this study, but the most problematic is that the process of measuring influences the object measured (participants cannot observe their decision being made from the third-person point of view).

In the last chapter, the author raises a concern about public distrust in neuroscience. The studies and magazine articles often exaggerate results and conclusions. And when the oversold result fails to be replicated, the public trust in science is eroded. The author, thus, advocates for neuro-skepticism rather than neuro-speculation.

As I was reading the book, I was nodding most of the time. Some things I disagree with myself on (I have written about Libet’s experiments here), and some things stung, as I am aware about the issues but I don’t know what to do (such as limitations of current neuroimaging techniques). Some critic, in my opinion, was not fair (some research in the past was questionable, I admit, but we are progressing towards open science, and the situation with the quality of studies generally is improving). Besides, some evidence in the book references documentaries, which I’m not convinced are a solid source.

Above all that, the book got me thinking about bigger problems, such as my responsibility as a scientist to deliver good science that is stripped away from my personal attributes. Scientists are people, and some people long for recognition, fame, and money. It seems to me that we, scientists, are not much different from content creators on TikTok or YouTube. Some influencers lose their identity over time because they say and do what their audience wants to see. We are too prone to this; we too sometimes say what people want to hear and not what we ourselves believe. 

The first step to fight this tendency is to recognize it. The second step is to be honest. I passed the first step. The second step will follow: I will go to my supervisor and tell him that I actually agree on some points with Felix Hasler. ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ Yes, I can do it.

Favorite quote:

“Sollten Sie Hirnforscher sein und einmal unvorbereitet gefragt werden, wo denn wohl diese oder jene mentale Leistung im Gehirn ablaeuft, sagen Sie einfach: Im ACC (anterior cingulate cortex). Mit dieser Antwort haben Sie eine mehr als nur faire Chance, richtig zu liegen.”

[If you're a brain researcher and someone catches you unprepared asking where this or that mental function lies in the brain, simply say, "In the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex)". With that answer, you have a more than fair chance of being correct.]

August, 2025