MMMmmm. I love discussions that revolve around people confusing causality and correlation.Voronwë wrote:Adex you are making the wrong conclusion from the data. there is ZERO comparison between this study and the data (which isnt 100% conclusive either) regarding homosexuality and hardwiring.
It is not that people are predisposed to be racists.
you should just conclude that racist whites have activity in different brain regions than non-racist whites when shown images of blacks.
obviously they researchers dont divide people into (i hope) 2 piles, non-racist and racist. they most likely score along some kind of continuum and then do an analysis of variance with certain fMRI images from that.
but back to the point. Somebody who is racist against blacks will have more powerful emotions than to somebody who views blacks the same as any other person. Emotions are brain activity.
fMRI does not measure brain structures. It measures brain activity. you cannot make ANY statements about the wiring of the structures from fMRI or differences in various parts of the brain.
you can only say this: blood was flowing to this part of the brain at time X. Time X also corresponds to when you showed the test subject the image.
The data tells you NOTHING about why a "racist" white has different activity than a non-racist white. Nothing from this experiement will tell you whether people are chemically pre-disposed to be racist, ro whether racism is purely a function of one's environment, or a blend of the two.
the suggestions about homosexuality being hardwired did not have their origin in fMRI data. They had their origin in morphological data - meaning a scientist did dissections of the brains of homosexual men who had died. There are some issues with other factors with the original study (as i recall), but this would still tell you a completely different type of thing than an fMRI study.
Just because a structure looks different in an anatomical exam doesnt necessarily mean it functions differently from an electrical point of view. But in brain function, distance is time (impulse take time to travel), and time is information (brain sets up rhythms to add layers of information to not only "what" impulse is coming in, but "when" that impulse comes in relative to other information. So in that regard, it is not irresponsible to conclude that differently shaped features might function somewhat differently.
/tangent off =)
This article offers a sensationalist representation of these findings and the "facts" that are thrown in suggests that this wasn't a significant study from a statistical perspective. Proving causality is much large kettle of fish and this study wouldn't even begin to touch that topic.In any case, most emotional behaviour should have clear fMRI findings of some discernable pattern. omg! l33t ins1d3r inf0z!! People use bits of their brain to think!!!111!!!1!!!!one!!!11!
