The comments are only on the most obvious distortions and confabulation in the first three chapters, as I think this is already much more attention that the book deserve. It should be much more than enough to convince you to ignore this book altogether.
I would expect many of the readers to find it impossible to believe
that a book that contains such confabulations would be published, and
hence refuse to believe that they are confabulations (this is the
typical blatant nonsense effect). If you
are one of these readers, pick up at random one of the points that I
raise, and check it with an expert on brain anatomy or clinical
neuroscience.
[0.4] On p.1, end of the third paragraph, Carter writes:
[0.6] It may be that Carter intends to demonstrate that claims in
the rest of the book, but she doesn't make this clear.
[1.3] of course, in this case an alert reader can see the problem both
with the overinterpretation and the lack of reproducibility across
individuals. Carter, however, writes to lay people that do not
expect to have to critically assess statements that the author makes,
and hence will mostly follow her nonsense ideas without thinking.
[1.4] On pages 12-13 Carter discuses areas that are "associated with
religion." After a mentioning "neurologists at the University of
California San Diego" without a reference (top of p.13), which I don't
know what is supposed to refer to, she refers to Persinger's work. She
doesn't tell the reader that Persinger is quite unique both in his
ideas and in his actual results, and that even he regards what he sees
more like delusions, and the main thrust of his work is to explain UFO
cases. She doesn't even quote his conclusions, and instead quotes from the
"Independence on Sunday' (a weekend version of a daily newspaper), what
is presumably a quote from Persinger (P.13). This quote describes an
anecdote which is obviously irreproducible. All this does not stop
Carter in her tracks, and next she writes(p.13):
[1.6] Two interesting point about "religious hot-spot" discussion are
that Carter makes quite a blatant use of the "lying by implication"
trick, and that after making the
quite grandiose claim of a "religious hot-spot wired into our brains",
she leaves the subject and does not return to it.
[1.7] On page 7 Carter says:
[1.8] At the bottom of page 15, Carter says:
[1.9] On page 16 Carter says:
[1.10] An interesting point about this discussion is that Carter does
not refer to the proponents of "neural Darwinism" (Edelman and
Calvin), even though they are the only reason this nonsense has any
standing. The other interesting point is that after presenting this as
the mechanism of learning, she ignores it in the rest of the book.
[1.11] On page 17 Carter says:
[1.12] In the case of word retrieval the point is specifically
demonstrated by one of the few studies that actually tried to reproduce results
across different laboratories ( Poline J-B, Vandenberghe R, Holmes AP,
Friston KJ, Frackowiak RSJ. Reproducibility of PET activation
studies: lessons from a multi-center European experiment. NeuroImage
4, 34 54 (1996)). The results in their figure 2 are already averaged
across individuals in each center, so individual brain differences
have already been filtered out, yet the patterns don't match at all.
[1.13] On pages 17-22 Carter perform her greatest confabulation. She
starts on the first line of page 17, discussing the neurones in the
brain of a new born baby:
[1.14] The "sparseness" of the connections is also very misleading. The
connectivity in the adult cortex is also sparse, as each neuron is in
contact only with a very small fraction of the neurons in the cortex.
However, this small fraction is still a large number (typically
thousands). In the baby brain, there are much less connections, but
still each neuron is connected with many others (probably hundreds).
Next Carter writes (p.18):
[1.16] The idea is developed further on p.21, where Carter associates
psychological developments with activation of areas in the cortex,
e.g.
[1.17] It should be noted that this confabulations are more than just
distortion of the process of development. The (fabricated) neat
association between activation of areas and psychological development
is obviously a very strong evidence for the association of function to
the areas, and most of readers will figure this out. As a result, even
those that don't "learn" about development from reading this part,
will be still left with the impression that there is a very strong
evidence for the association between areas and function, even though
all this "evidence" is a confabulation.
[2.1] On pages 51-53 Carter presents a description of the way humour
works based on interactions between the hemi-spheres, which is
evidence free. I don't know if the claim that the right-brain lesion
patient is more likely to pick the literal end for a joke (p.52) is
based on evidence or a confabulation, but any cognitive deterioration
would in general lead to simpler responses, so even if it is true it
shows nothing. The idea that left-brain patient will choose (a) is
clearly an invention from the way the text is written.
[2.2] After discussing symptoms in patients with split brains, Carter
starts to "apply" the results to healthy people. On page 58 she claims
[2.3] At least in this sentence Carter qualifies the statement by using
the word "may", and she does it in several of the other baseless ideas on
pages 58-9. However, she doesn't qualify it in the caption of the picture at
the top of page 59, where she says:
[3.1] On pages 84-86, Carter presents her theory of how the brain make sure
that "body parts do whatever is required to find food, sex, security
and other vital requirements." The substantial part of this theory is
that the second step requires an action. On p.85 she writes:
[3.2] At the bottom of page 86 Carter starts to discuss the putamen.
First she writes:
[3.3] Very little is known about the role of the putamen, except that it
one of the parts of the brain that are most affected in Huntingdon
disease. There are some speculations on its rule in Tourette's syndrome,
but no robust evidence. Carter, however, has her own ideas (p.85-86):
[3.4] At that point Carter does not mention the motor cortex at all. In
the picture on page 88 the motor cortex does appear, interacting with
the putamen, but the figure layout suggests that it is the putamen
that is in more direct contact with the legs. In the caption (p.89),
Carter first reiterates the lie that the putamen is in control, then
follows it with a somewhat confused and evidence-free description of
how it controls movements via the cortex, and repeats the speculation
that overactive putamen causes Tourette's syndrome. Carter returns to
the putamen in the pictures on pages 264 and 266, claiming that
procedural memories are stored in it (clear nonsense, these are
obviously is in the cortex), and mentions it again on 282.
[3.5] On pages 91-92 Carter repeats the same kind of evidence free
speculations about the putamen in Tourette's syndrome, this time about
the caudate nucleus and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). She
writes (pp. 91-92):
[3.6] Carter than writes later on the same page (p.92):
[3.7] Carter then goes on to describe an experiment with monkeys and
some scanning experiments on OCD patients. She may have meant these to
be the evidence for this nonsense, but even if these studies will
prove reproducible, they don't support her confabulations at all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
0. Introduction
[0.1] The third sentence of the book reads (p.1):
Now, however, new imaging techniques make the internal world of the
mind visible, much as X-rays reveal our bones.
This is simply false, for two reasons:
[0.2] Rita Carter regard reproducibility with contempt. On p.4 she says:
Most of what you will read is actually more complicated than I might
make it appear, and some of it will almost certainly turn out to be
wrong. This is because many of the findings are too new to have been
replicated.
[0.3] So why writes a book for lay people based on findings that haven't
been replicated? Carter would probably say to make sure that
the book is up to date. The real answer is that without relying on
unreplicated results there will not be a book, as most of the book relies on
irreproducible results from brain imaging and other studies (in
addition to evidence-free confabulations).
Similarly, it is now possible to locate and observe the mechanics of
rage, violence and misperception, and even to detect the physical
signs of complex qualities of mind like kindness, humour,
heartlessness, gregariousness, altruism, mother-love and
self-awareness.
[0.5] This sentence is a blatant lie. We cannot observe the mechanics of
rage, violence and misperception and hardly locate some of them, and
we cannot see the physical signs of any of kindness, humour,
heartlessness, gergariousness, altruism, mother-love or self-awareness.
All the cases where these processes has been "observed" are either
irreproducible results or overinterpretations of the data, and in most
of the cases both.
1. Chapter One
[1.1] On page 10 , Carter presents a case of an epileptic in whom
passing a current through some part of her brain causes her to become
amused. She then says (p.10) :
The surgeons seemed to have come across a part of the brain that
creates amusement, however unpromising the circumstances.
This nonsense demonstrates the two main problems with the book:
overinterpretation and contempt for reproducibility:
[1.2] This example also demonstrates other features of Carter's
writing:
The fact that we seem to have a religious hot-spot wired into our
brains does not necessarily prove that the spiritual dimension is merely
a product of a particular flurry of electrical activity.
[1.5] Here, Carter uses the trick of lying by implication: She doesn't say:
"that establishes that we have a religious hot-spot" (which is
obviously nonsense), and instead discusses other aspect of the
question as if this fact has already been clearly established. This
way make it harder for the reader to spot the nonsense.
New neural connections are made with every incoming sensation and old
ones disappear as memories fade.
This statement is so trivially false that it is hard to believe that
it is actually supposed to mean what it says. It seems to me most
likely that "neural connections" don't actually mean here synapses, but
something else, but it is not obvious what. Nevertheless, a lay person
cannot know how wrong this statement is, and therefore will understand
from it that neural connections, in the sense of synapses, are created
with every incoming sensation.
Part of the brain's internal environment is a ceaseless pressure to
seek out new stimuli. This greed for information is one of the
fundamental properties of the brain and it is reflected in our most
basic reactions.
Apart from the bizarre language (what is "internal environment"?),
this statement is not unreasonable. However, except in this paragraph,
Carter completely ignores the question of curiosity, even though it
is "one of the fundamental properties of the brain".
Computer simulations of neural networks show that the simplest network
can develop phenomenal complexity in a short time if it is programmed
to replicate patterns that are beneficial to its survival and junk
those that aren't. Similarly, brain activity evolves in the
individual.
The first sentence (about computer neural networks) is a typical
overinterpretation common in the artificial networks field. The last
sentence (that the brain does the same) is simply false. There isn't
anything that could be remotely considered as evidence for it, and
because of the stochastic connectivity of
the cortex, it is clearly false.
The pattern of brain activation during, say, a word retrieval task is
usually similar enough among a dozen or so participants who typically
take part in such studies for their scans to be overlaid and still
show a clear pattern.
That is a blatant lie. Overlaying patterns of the participants will
come out as an indiscernible jumble. The reason that such studies come
with "clear results" is that they use quite complex software which
eliminates all the "noise", including any disagreements between
different brains. As I show in the discussion of
averaging in imaging, even simple averaging applied to brains that
are totally randomly related can generate "significant" results. Since
brains are not totally randomly related, and the software that imagers
use is much more sophisticated, they don't have a problem to generate
"clear results" out of what is essentially noise. The fact that they
cannot generate reproducible results shows that this is what they do.
These neurones are not mature, however. many of their axons are as yet
unsheathed by myelin - the insulation that allows signals to pass
along them - and the connections between them are sparse.
The claim that the myelin "allows signals to pass" is a simple lie.
Myelin speeds them up, and maybe increase the reliability, but signals
pass in unmyelinated axons too. This is another of "lying by
implication", as Carter does not explicitly states that signals cannot
pass through unmyelinated axons, it is just implied strongly.
Hence large areas of the brain, and particular the cerebral cortex,
are not functioning.
[1.15] That is a blatant lie, and quite a ridiculous one. The cerebral cortex
is clearly active at birth. Carter seems to base this nonsense on
the claim that PET studies don't show activity in the cortex, but she
doesn't actually say that. The next sentence reads:
PET studies of new-born brains show the active areas those associated
with bodily regulation (the brainstem), sensation (thalamus) and
movement (deep cerebellum).
i.e. she doesn't actually make the claim that PET studies show that
the cerebral cortex is inactive, and let the reader deduce it. (It is
quite possible that PET cannot detect signals in baby's cortex, due to
some limitation of the method). She gives a reference to a monograph
by J.M. Tanner (which I haven't read) from 1989. In principle, it is
possible that Carter based her confabulation on something that Tanner
wrote, but I doubt it because a search on the net suggests that Tanner is
an anthropolgist with interest in human growth, but not in
neuroscience.
The frontal lobes first kick in at about six months, bringing the
first glimmering of cognition.
and
The language areas become active about eighteen months after birth.
All these associations are total confabulations, as all the areas of
the cortex are active at birth.
2. Chapter Two
Odd remarks that just slip out, feeling we can't explain, silly
errors like mistaking one object for another, are traditionally seen as
evidence of deep inner conflicts. In fact, many of these may be caused
by faulty or incomplete inter-hemispheric communication.
This hypothesis is not based on any evidence. maybe it is supposed to
be based on the evidence from the data split-brain patients, but this
data doesn't tell us what happens in a healthy brain. It should be noted
that Carter uses here the trick of a strawman alternative, where an
unlikely possibility ("deep inner conflicts" here) is presented as
an alternative, here the only one. However,
since all we are talking here is a temporary failure of the system,
there is no need to look for deep explanation, as there are infinite
ways in which a complex system like the brain can fail.
The left hemisphere sees only the lines - the right sees the dog.
Again, A statement which is not based on any evidence. And in the
next page, all doubts disappear (p. 60):
The left/right hemisphere split often shows up in our reactions to
art: 'I like it but I don't know why' is not necessarily a philistine
reaction - it demonstrates only that the work is being appreciated by
the right brain rather than analysed by the left.
Another evidence-free statement (and using again the strawman
alternative trick (philistine reaction)).
3. Chapter three
Note - the action is the thing. Not just the food, or the sex,
or being at home.
(Italics in the source).
This ridiculous statement (does Carter really think that people don't
enjoy 'just sex'?) presents the essential role of action as if it is a well
established fact, even though that is Carter's invention without
relation to any evidence. It is possible that the next sentence is
supposed to be supporting evidence:
Having nutrients pumped into the blood keeps you alive but it does not
give the same pleasure as a meal that has to be prepared, served,
chewed and swallowed.
That is clear nonsense: preparing and serving the food is clearly not
essential part of enjoying it for most of people, and chewing and
swallowing are enjoyable because the way they stimulate the taste
buds, smell receptors and touch receptors in the mouth and throat.
The twitches are fragments of skills - each a tiny, degraded echo of
once purposeful movement - that are triggered into existence by bursts
of activity in an area of the unconscious brain called putamen.
These assertions, which are presented as facts, are evidence-free
speculation. There is no evidence that the twitches are in general "fragments of
skills", though in some cases they may be. And there is no evidence
that they happen because of bursts of activity in the putamen.
Its function is to look after automatic movements - those that have
been learned by repetition - and keep them flowing so the conscious
brain can get on with the grander business of deciding how to direct
those movement and learning new ones. Pedalling a bike (providing the
rider is experienced), for example, is controlled by the putamen,
while the movements needed to execute a new and complicated dance, say,
would be controlled by different brain areas.
This is a total confabulation, and (in contrast to the speculations in
[3.2]) is clearly false. All volitional movements, including highly
learned ones liking riding pedalling bicycle (what is referred to as
"automatic") are controlled by the motor areas of the cortex, via the
brain stem, with some involvement of the Cerebellum which is essential
for accurate and smooth movement. At most, the putamen has some
modulating effect on the cortex, but it certainly does not control
pedalling a bike.
But in this case the memories are not personal ones picked up during
the person's lifetime but those that are built into the species as
instincts. The instinct to keep clean, to check the environment
constantly for signs of anything untoward; the need to keep order and
balance - all these have a basis in survival.
This is totally evidence-free, and clear nonsense. Humans clearly
don't have an instinct to keep clean, and children have to be taught to do
it. Checking the environment and keeping order and balance are less
obvious. However, OCD also involve many other kinds of behaviours,
some of which Carter mentioned in the preceding pages, and many of
these are clearly not instincts.
In a normal brain the caudate nucleus looks after certain aspects of
automatic thinking just as the putamen looks after automatic
movements. The caudate nucleus is the part of the brain that
automatically prompts you to wash when you are dirty; that reminds you
to check the doors before you leave the house; and that alerts you to
and focuses your attention on anything that is out of order.
All of this is evidence-free confabulation, and the second sentence is
total nonsense.
yh@maldoo.com
26Jan2001
http://human-brain.org/