Popular neuroscience’s brain-region trivia offers nothing for self-transformation

Evidence

Even if it is fascinating to observe aplysias, we cannot spend our time in ecstasies over slugs. Nor in asking ourselves, as certain popularizing scientific magazines often invite us to do: ”How does the brain activity of a mathematician differ from that of an architect?” ”What cerebral regions are active when a lawyer is preparing his arguments?” ”Can we teach people to activate the appropriate cerebral regions to improve their performance?” or even ”Will it soon be possible to read thoughts?” All of this is, at bottom, a matter of perfect indifference to us, and our self itself—as much as our body—is exhausted by such an absence of perspective. A sad story for a sad subject, never granted an understanding of its own transformation. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 222

Categorization

• SEED: A sharp scathing catalog of pop-neuroscience questions (‘how does an architect’s brain differ from a mathematician’s’) that could anchor a critique of neuro-optimization culture for one of the reader’s pieces.
• XREF: This disdain for functional brain-region mapping dovetails with the plasticity-vs-docile-flexibility critique — region-specific ‘training’ being the docile form.