Different in degree or kind: An essay captures Adler (Introduction)

by romansh , Monday, November 16, 2015, 03:13 (3296 days ago) @ David Turell
edited by romansh, Monday, November 16, 2015, 03:22

David fMRI's measure blood flows to the regions being used by the brain, nothing more. All overhyped. The ideas, themselves, are still immaterial. Consciousness is still unexplained by all the research we know how to do.-A technicality-fMRIs do not measure blood flow ... regardless of what you might have read.-fMRIs measure the nuclear magnetic resonance of protons which depends on the chemical environment of the protons. The fMRI can distinguish an oxygenated and deoxygenated environment. This is used for a proxy of blood flow. Higher the blood flow the more oxygenated the blood.-Now of course this is a pretty crude measure of what is going on in the brain. This makes it all the more amazing that such a crude device could actually determine anything going on in the brain.-So if such a crude method can "read" what an observer can see albeit far from perfectly this is a huge step forward and does support the concept that these ideas are patterns in the brain.-That you say it is overhyped is amazing.