Neuroscientists have various tricks to try to fool us into thinking that there is some big relation between some aspect of the mind and some part of the brain. The major trick they have used is what I call the "lying with colors" trick. The trick works like this:
(1) The brains of a small number of people are scanned while the people were engaging in some cognitive activity.
(2) It will be found that tiny regions of the brain may have a very slightly greater activity during such a cognitive activity, some difference such as 1 part in 200, something we would expect to occur from mere chance variations, even if the brain does not cause the particular cognitive activity.
(3) A paper will then be published claiming that certain regions of the brain were "activated" during the type of cognitive activity. The claim will be misleading because all regions of the brain are continuously active throughout the day, with their neurons firing at a rate at about 1 time per second, or more (up to about 100 times per second). So it was not true that inactive brain regions suddenly became active when the cognitive activity was done.
(4) The paper will include "lying with colors" brain visuals that do not correctly depict the tiny variations in activity. Instead of showing a difference of 1 part in 200 by something like a very slightly more red color corresponding to a 1 part in 200 difference, we will see the parts with the 1 part in 200 greater activity in red or yellow, surrounded by regions in black and white.
I can give an example of such misleading visuals in brain scan studies, from a study trying to show evidence that brains produce creative thought. The first visual is from the paper "To create or to recall original ideas: Brain processes associated with the imagination of novel object uses." 42 subjects had their brains scanned while they were trying to think of novel uses for a familiar object such as a hat (an exercise in creative thinking). The sample size was much larger than typically used in studies such as these, which typically involve fewer than 15 subjects. Figure 3 of the paper is shown below:
We have a region of the brain shown in orange, against a black and white background. The visual suggests the idea of some part of the brain "lighting up," becoming much more active. But no such thing happened. The line graph shows the reality. The "%SC" stands for percent signal change. The reported signal change is only one third of one percent, a signal change of merely .003. This is what we would expect from random fluctuations, even if brains have nothing to do with producing creative thought. In the left part of the visual above, a negligible difference is misleadingly depicted as if some big difference occurred. Most of the time this happens, you don't have the graph on the right, but only a misleading visual like the one on the left.
We had in a recent neuroscience study and its press release another example of misleading claims by neuroscientists and their publicists. Neuroscientists did a meta-analysis, analyzing different studies that had attempted to find a link between the brain and creativity. What they mainly found was a negative connection between creativity and what they called "the right frontal pole." But rather than candidly describing this as a negative association, the negative association was misleadingly described as "a brain circuit for creativity."
The Mass General Brigham press release had the misleading headline, "Researchers Identify a Brain Circuit for Creativity." We have this sentence in the press release, which lets us know that the so-called "brain circuit for creativity" is actually some effect by which brain damage can cause increased creativity: "By evaluating data from 857 participants across 36 fMRI studies, researchers identified a brain circuit for creativity and found people with brain injuries or neurodegenerative diseases that affect this circuit may have increased creativity." Got it? The sentence ends with "increased creativity," not "decreased creativity." So why on Earth is that being called "a brain circuit for creativity"? That's like saying that being chained to a large anvil and dropped in a swimming pool is using "a metal device for swimming."
According to the paper here, brain scans of a woman showed "marked atrophy in bilateral temporopolar and frontal regions." The woman with brain shrinkage started acting oddly. according to her relatives. But she developed an interest in art she had never had before. Some samples of her art are given, some very good.
The paper here refers to unilateral brain damage (on one side of the brain), reporting no change in creativity after such damage:
"Approximately 50 or so cases with unilateral brain damage (largely in one side of the brain, and where the etiology is commonly stroke or tumor) have by now been described in the neurological literature (Rose, 2004; Bogousslavsky and Boller, 2005; Zaidel, 2005, 2013a,c; Finger et al., 2013; Mazzucchi et al., 2013; Piechowski-Jozwiak and Bogousslavsky, 2013).
The key questions concern post-damage alterations in creativity, as well as loss of talent, or skill. A review of the majority of these neurological cases suggests that, on the whole, they go on producing art, sometimes prolifically, despite the damage’s laterality or localization (Zaidel, 2005). Importantly, post-damage output has revealed that their creativity does not increase, nor diminish (Zaidel, 2005, 2010, 2013b)."
Referring to the brain-damaging disease Parkinson's Disease (PD), the paper here says, "De novo artistic drive has also been reported in PD patients that had not ever shown any interest in art making whatsoever."
The paper here ("Frontal lobe neurology and the creative mind") refers to patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). We read of what sounds like the disease caused more of an increase in artistic creativity then a decrease. We read, "All reported patients with temporal FTD (n = 19) presented the emergence (n = 11), increase (n = 2), or preservation (n = 6) of creative production but no degradation of artistic abilities (Miller et al., 1996, 1998; Edwards-Lee et al., 1997; Drago et al., 2006b; Wu et al., 2013). Most case reports on behavioral variant FTD (n = 10) noted the emergence (n = 4), increase (n = 4), or preservation (n = 1) of artistic abilities (Miller et al., 1998; Thomas-Anterion et al., 2002; Mendez and Perryman, 2003; Serrano et al., 2005; Liu et al., 2009; Thomas-Anterion, 2009). The effects of Alzheimer's disease on artistic production were more heterogeneous, with observations of both increase (Fornazzari, 2005; Chakravarty, 2011) and degradation (Cummings and Zarit, 1987; Crutch et al., 2001; Serrano et al., 2005; van Buren et al., 2013)."
Page 100 of the document here states this: "For example, Miller et al. (1996) reported several stroke patients who suffered damage to the left temporal hemisphere and dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal regions, and who developed sudden artistic abilities (see also Cela-Conde et al., 2011; Husslein-Arco & Koja, 2010; Midorikawa et al., 2008; Miller & Hou, 2004). "
The results reported are consistent with the idea that your brain is not the source of your creative thoughts or your creative impulses. Brains are involved in muscle activity, so if you do a brain scan of someone drawing or writing a new short story, the brain scan will pick up some higher activity associated with the muscle movement. But do a brain scan of a large sample of people engaging in creative thought without moving a muscle, and you will get unimpressive results like those shown in the first image of this post, results like those we might expect to get even if brains have nothing to do with creativity.
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