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Cargando... Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences (edición 2010)por Thomas Armstrong
Información de la obraNeurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Brain Differences por Thomas Armstrong
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Your brain is not a machine: it's a rainforest. Human beings and human brains exist along continua. Categories always obscure as well as illuminate. Competence is culturally defined. Success in life comes from a combination of adapting the cognitive self to the environment and the environment to the cognitive self. There are many ways to adapt: lifestyle choices, assistive technologies, spending time with people that make you happy. Positive niche construction directly modifies the brain, enhancing its ability to respond positively. Neurodiversity as a concept is absolutely crawling with human dignity, and this is a virtuous and important book. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
In "The Gift of Neurodiversity", Armstrong argues that we have been too quick to pathologise brain differences. Indeed, in recent years, we have re-classified these differences, labeling many of them "disorders." What science actually suggests is that there are many different ways for our brains to be wired, and that there are actual "gifts" or "strengths" attached to some of these differences. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Evolutionary Psychology, first. This used to be called socio-biology but it had to change its name because the field became so thoroughly and frequently derided by the rest of the scientific community. Of course, it should actually have just been abandoned, but too many people were making a living out of it and weren't going to take on the much more difficult task of doing real science. And that's the problem; it isn't science, it's making up random hypotheses to explain any specific human behaviour you care to name based on why it would have benefited Stone Age individuals or communities. There is no attempt to examine whether actual Stone Age people really did or do benefit, or to determine if there are any other equally plausible explanations. Since there is no attempt to test hypotheses, there is no attempt to do actual science.
Second, fMRI: There are several types of MRI and this is specifically about the "functional" variety that attempts to map the distribution of blood in the brain with high temporal resolution. The basic idea in psychological studies using fMRI is to put a person in the imagining machine and then ask them to perform a specific mental task, such as, to take preposterous example, think of a banana. One then observes which region of the brain "lights up" i.e. notionally starts using more blood. This is then the part of the brain that evolved to deal with whatever task was set.
There are two problems. The first is specificity. "Think of a banana" isn't very specific. Do you imagine what a banana looks like? Tastes like? Smells like? Feels like? Peeled or unpeeled? Ripe or green? And on and on and on. It's possible to deal with this by making the task extremely specific, e.g. giving a mental arithmatic problem. Even in this example, there is more than one method (visual, pure memory, etc.) So if you read about such a study, check if the task is even remotely well defined and if it isn't, discard the evidence - it's unsound.
Second, and even more damning, is the "dead fish" experiment. A research team put a dead fish in an fMRI machine and told it to perform various mental tasks. Of course the fish did not perform these tasks, being dead. Nevertheless, various parts of its brain "lit up." Which tells us that fMRI simply doesn't work very well for present purposes. Results can be random and meaningless. Hence if a conclusion ONLY has fMRI and/or evolutionary psychology evidence to back it up, it's completely unreliable, however plausible it might seem. A side note on this experiment is that it won an IgNobel Prize for being a waste of research money. Put a dead fish in an MRI machine?! What a stupid thing to do! Not so - this experiment is extremely important but you can be forgiven for thinking it is dumb if you only read a headline. So don't judge science from headlines. You will end up misled.
An important caveat about fMRI is that it CAN be useful for physiological purposes e.g. locating brain injuries. The main difference is if structures seen in scans persist for a long time rather than being ephemeral artifacts created by the algorithm used to reconstruct the image from the data.
The fact that I've spent so much time warning you, dear reader, not to take the scientific contents of this book at face value is why I can't really recommend it, despite for the most part being solidly in support of the author's overall aims in regard to social acceptance of diversity in human psychology. Very disappointing.
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