/sci/ - Science & Math

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732401]

Please allow me to explain to you my concerns with contemporary psychology.

Mind you, this should not turn into a discussion about whether psychology is a science or not. First a distinction should be made between experimental- and clinical psychology. This discussion is centered around the former. By definition it is a science, and within the scientific community it is regarded as such. This is not up for debate. If you which to argue that it’s not, please make your own thread because your posts here will be ignored by me. The same goes if you: A) use ad-hominem, B) do not adhere to simple rules of debate, and C) mention Freud in the context of questioning the validity of psychology. The first two will make you look silly for obvious reasons. The last will make you look silly because it demonstrates you know little about psychology. If this is the case I would rather you not enter the discussion.

Now that we got that out of the way we can move on to the main purpose of this thread.

Ever since we were freed from the restraining shackles of behaviorism by means of the cognitive revolution, looking beyond behavior has become commonplace. The mind is no longer a black box. Much has been learned about the mediating neural substrates of perception, cognition and behavior, which is great. The goal is to understand the mind, and the means have been to investigate it by its output.

[continues]

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732406]

For me, this is where the problem lies. Making inferences about brain function are based on behavioral measures. These can be correlated with neurophysiological- or hemodynamic measures of course, but the starting point is behavior. Necessarily this means any charting of neural systems is based on a semantic categorization of the phenomenon in question. This is not so much a problem when investigating relatively simple subjects such as classical conditioning, however it gets trickier when investigating complex behavioral and neural systems.

Over the decades this way of doing research has led to an exponential proliferation of described phenomena, while losing sight of the underlying neural systems. For example: the term ‘inhibition’ in psychology can mean anything from suppressing saccades to inappropriate social gestures. A striking example of what exactly behavior to brain mapping can lead to would be the list of functions ascribed to complex parts of the association cortices such as the anterior cingulate. It has been implicated in: action monitoring, pain perception, inhibition (as ambiguous as the term is), positive and negative reinforcement, conflict detection, emotion recognition, spatial navigation, the list goes on.

It is my opinion the directionality of research should be reversed. Definitions should be based upon the mediating system rather than the endpoint. Behavior to brain is a good starting point, but brain to behavior is essential for a unitary theory of the mind and brain.

You may discuss.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732428]

I'll just bump this.

[Anonymous No.2732459]

>psychology thread
>guaranteed replies
no wait...

[Anonymous No.2732480]

A nuanced post? On my /sci/? THE WORLD MUST BE BROKAN.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732503]

bump

[StormTroll !GnYU8vo7lA No.2732517]

>By definition it is a science, and within the scientific community it is regarded as such. This is not up for debate. If you which to argue that it’s not, please make your own thread because your posts here will be ignored by me.

This thread is now about how psychology isn't a real science and the OP is full of shit.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732518]

I should have put a tl;dr right at the top, shouldn't I?

lazy bastards

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732527]

>>2732517
Good job, you now look silly.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732546]

[Anonymous No.2732553]

tl;dr

[Anonymous No.2732554]

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732573]

>>2732553
Don't be a dick and read the fucking text.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732601]

Really? Not a single psychologyfag on today?

[Anonymous No.2732606]

>>2732517
/sci/ confirmed for 12 y/o

[Anonymous No.2732631]

>ITT: tldr


Seriously tho. The only people that care about whether or not psychology deserves it's rightful place in science are trolls and aspies.

-current neuro/psych major

[Anonymous No.2732632]

>>2732406
> Behavior to brain is a good starting point, but brain to behavior is essential for a unitary theory of the mind and brain.

We already have that, it's called neuroscience.

[Anonymous No.2732657]

>>2732631
>mfw the only people defending psychology are the dumbasses studying it

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732664]

>>2732631
I know, but thread like these are troll bait.
>>2732632
You don't have to tell me, I'm a graduate student of neuroscience. We have the same problem in cognitive neuroscience though. There's not really a difference between cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Cellular neuroscience on the other hand doesn't have this problem obviously, but it also doesn't deal with behavior or cognition all that much.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732673]

>>2732664
>thread like these
threads*

[Anonymous No.2732692]

>>2732657
>mvq the only people attacking psychology are underaged dumbasses

[Anonymous No.2732709]

tldr

[sage No.2732711]

>>2732657
>hurrrrrrrrrrrr

OP refrain from posting this. The entirety of academia defines it as a science, and it uses the scientific method. Any discussion past that isn't psychology, or is irrelevant.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732730]

>>2732711
Why did you sage? Didn't I specifically state I didn't want this discussion to turn into one about whether psychology is a science or not?

[Anonymous No.2732742]

>>2732664
You're in grad school, but you don't think it would be difficult to map brain anatomy to mental functions? I think you need to propose a good way to do this, because right now this is how I envision such an experiment going...

> Temporarily inhibit mouse's x region
> WHATCHA THINKIN BOUT?

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732783]

>>2732742
>You're in grad school, but you don't think it would be difficult to map brain anatomy to mental functions?
No, I never said it would be easy.
>I think you need to propose a good way to do this
Fair enough. Examples of this type of research would be to use an individual differences approach with structural brain measures, correlated to performance on behavioral tasks which are relatively simple in design. This has already been done for primary sensory areas and voxel based morphometry and diffusion tensor imaging for instance. The next step would be to investigate multisensory integration, and take it from there.

As it stands we don't even have a sufficient anatomical description of large parts of the association cortices. We first need to understand the structure and specific neuronal pathways connecting different higher level parts of the cortex before we can start to theorize about unitary function. Hypotheses can be generated of course, but they should follow from structural anatomical mapping.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732788]

>>2732709
why even bother responding

[Anonymous No.2732809]

To be honest, OP, I'm not even sure what your gripe is and I've read your post a few times. I think your problem is articulating what exactly you're proposing.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732811]

>>2732809
Which post? The OP or this one: >>2732783 ?

[Anonymous No.2732845]

>>2732811
The original post.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732853]

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732899]

>>2732845
Ok, I'll try to elaborate.

The problem is that if you investigate behavior, you make a categorization based on the semantic description of behavior. As in the example of inhibition, 'suppressing' some behavioral tendency can mean many things. If I'm trying to hit a baseball, but at the last second decide not to do so, I'm actively suppressing the signal generated in my premotor cortex, stopping me from completing a sequence of muscle movements. However if I'm trying to suppress, lets say, swearing in public, completely different neural systems come into play.

With the currently accepted term of inhibition both behaviors would be purposed to be regulated by the same mechanism. That's because in semantic description both seem similar, but they really aren't. This has led to people suggesting a wide variety of functions to brain areas, because they're trying to map a specific behavioral mechanism to the brain, while in fact the mechanism consists of many distinct and overlapping mechanisms.

[Anonymous No.2732934]

>>2732899
>With the currently accepted term of inhibition both behaviors would be purposed to be regulated by the same mechanism.
Says who? Maybe the verbal description suggests it, but anyone even a bit in the know would never make that assumption.
>they're trying to map a specific behavioral mechanism to the brain
Not necessarily. Research is often focused on how a particular pathway or mechanism works without a view towards a specific behavior. However, the point is taken, to which I can only respond that applying a broad behavioral label on a mechanism or pathway is the only way to really have a meaningful link to a practical application.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2732990]

>>2732934
>Maybe the verbal description suggests it, but anyone even a bit in the know would never make that assumption.
Read the literature. These assumptions are all over the place. The term is used for all kinds of stuff.
>Not necessarily. Research is often focused on how a particular pathway or mechanism works without a view towards a specific behavior.
You can't map a functional system without a hypothesis about behavior.
>applying a broad behavioral label on a mechanism or pathway is the only way to really have a meaningful link to a practical application.
I somewhat agree, but this doesn't conflict with what I've been purposing. The label (and hypothesis) should follow from the anatomy, and not correlational research.

[None !ZB6kpElKD6 No.2733081]

ima bumpan