In the past three decades neuroimaging has revolutionized the world of neural sciences. First, it was the introduction of the computerized axial tomography in the 70s that gave information of anatomical structure. In the early 80s, the development of positron emission tomography gave the neural sciences the ability to produce 3D images of functional processes and magnetic resonance imaging provided an alternative to CT and X-ray imaging without the radiation exposure. Lastly, the domination that Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging has developed in the field of brain mapping came about in the 90s. As mentioned in the scientific literature, neuroimaging data can help map the connection of a specific brain region to a cognitive function; this
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Nonetheless, neuroimaging can provide answers to more complex situations such as how to determine if two different tasks take part in a mutual or distinct processing mechanism or how much distinction can be established between the representations of two different cognitive tasks as mentioned by Mather et …show more content…
Contrary to the idea dispersed by Uttal’s (2001) book, fMRI and neuroimaging in general is not the phrenology of the twenty-first century. In a literature survey perform by Tressoldi et al. (2012), he and his colleagues discovered that 11.2% of the fMRI studies conducted between 2007 and 2011 aimed to differentiate between conflicting psychological theories or support some psychological theory. After filtering the studies following his defined method, they narrow the studies down to a total of 20. Within the 20 studies, there were eleven that suffered from consistency fallacy. The remaining nine were indeed good examples of neuroimaging data being use to inform cognitive theory. One of the nine was a study perform by Greene and Paxton (2009) in which they tested the validity of the “will” hypothesis and the “grace” hypothesis. Although the literature survey conducted by Tressoldi showed that the vast majority of fMRI data is use mostly for localization studies, there still limited evidence that in principle Neuroimaging can indeed inform and help in the formation, testing and refinement of cognitive
Nonetheless, neuroimaging can provide answers to more complex situations such as how to determine if two different tasks take part in a mutual or distinct processing mechanism or how much distinction can be established between the representations of two different cognitive tasks as mentioned by Mather et …show more content…
Contrary to the idea dispersed by Uttal’s (2001) book, fMRI and neuroimaging in general is not the phrenology of the twenty-first century. In a literature survey perform by Tressoldi et al. (2012), he and his colleagues discovered that 11.2% of the fMRI studies conducted between 2007 and 2011 aimed to differentiate between conflicting psychological theories or support some psychological theory. After filtering the studies following his defined method, they narrow the studies down to a total of 20. Within the 20 studies, there were eleven that suffered from consistency fallacy. The remaining nine were indeed good examples of neuroimaging data being use to inform cognitive theory. One of the nine was a study perform by Greene and Paxton (2009) in which they tested the validity of the “will” hypothesis and the “grace” hypothesis. Although the literature survey conducted by Tressoldi showed that the vast majority of fMRI data is use mostly for localization studies, there still limited evidence that in principle Neuroimaging can indeed inform and help in the formation, testing and refinement of cognitive