Monday, November 5, 2012

Why is he robot-like? Oh, he is a scientist...


Probably the stereotype of bright, genius people,  who are not empathetic at all, such as Sheldon Cooper, could have a scientific explanation.  According to a study conducted by researchers from CWRU and WUSTL, human beings may not be able to be analytic and empathetic at the same time. 

  45 healthy college students were shown randomly several written and video problems requiring them to think about how others may feel, and problems which required physics to resolve, while their brain activity was recorded by a magnetic resonance imager.

The findings revealed that when facing questions related to social issues, the students’ brain areas associated with empathy and social skills were activated, whereas the analytical areas were deactivated. On the other hand, when the students faced physics questions, the brain areas associated with analysis were activated, and the social networks deactivated.

"Empathetic and analytic thinking are, at least to some extent, mutually exclusive in the brain" concluded Anthony Jack, lead author of the study. Disabilities such autism, or mental disorders such as schizophrenia could be better understood. 

However, critics have already arisen. Some people claim that it is not possible to affirm that one network completely suppresses the other just because it appears so in the brain scans; in other words, brain scanning experiments should not be overvalued and seen as the only way of knowing how the brain works. Actually, philosophy could play an important role too.

Furthermore, it is said that this study attempts to solve the “explanatory gap”, which according to Jack, it corresponds to "the disconnect between experiential understanding and scientific understanding.”

 Do you think that this study really solves the concept of "explanatory gap"? Is the physiological evidence enough to explain a phenomenon like this one?

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