This month’s episode of Brain Science is an interview with Stanford psychologist Russell A Poldrack, author of The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Cannot Reveal about Our Thoughts. We talk about the principles of how fMRI works and how new methods are overcoming some of the problems from the early days in the field. Because Dr. Poldrack has been in the field since its infancy, he is uniquely placed to give us both an overview of the history and an analysis of its progress. We emphasize several important principles that must be honored in order to get results that are reliable and reproducible.

This episode is an important follow-up to the critical conversation I had with Dr. William Uttal back in BS 132.

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Links and References:

• The New Mind Readers: What Neuroimaging Can and Cannot Reveal about Our Thoughts

  by Russell A. Poldrack (2018)

  • Extensive Bibliography is available.

• Mind and Brain: A Critical Appraisal of Cognitive Neuroscience by William R. Uttal

  • Discussed in Episode 132 (encore of BSP 83)

• Russell A Poldrack, “Can Cognitive Processes be Inferred from Neuroimaging Data?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10. no.2 (2006) 69-63, doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.12.004 (free PDF).

• E Vul, C Harris, P Winkielman, and H Pashler, “Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition.” Perspectives in Psychological Science 4, no.3 (2009): 274-90.

• Cognitive Atlas

• Organization for Human Brain Mapping

• Dr. Poldrack’s MyConnectome project

• See episode transcript for additional links.

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