Description: A typical approach to talking about the brain taken in introductory psychology courses involves looking at the consequences of lesions or stroke damage (not the same things) in specific areas of the brain. Lesions in areas of the hypothalamus seem to be related to increases of decreases in appetite in rats, for example. But are those sorts of findings indicative of how the brain, as a whole, works? Well, consider this. Two people can have lesions or stroke damage in the same areas of their brains and yet only one of those persons’ behavior or functioning is impacted by the damage. How can that be is functions or processes are specifically located in the brain? How about the broader theory that creativity is located in the right hemisphere of our brains while rational thinking is located in the right side of our brains? You have certainly heard that before somewhere. If this is so how can we account for math teachers or logics instructors who consistently come up with very creative, engaging examples of the concepts they are trying to teach? What about artists who are remarkably articulate in speaking of their work and its connections to our world and current events? What if, while being a pretty good place to start studying how the brain works, the function in location approach is far too simple? What sorts of new approach might help us to make sense of the broad range of individual difference in brain structure and function? Any thoughts? Have a read through the article linked below to see what a great many neuroscientists are telling us we should be moving towards in our understanding of brain function.
Source: New view of the brain: It’s all in the connections, Science News, ScienceDirect.
Date: November 3, 2022

Article Link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221103140804.htm
Did the example of language and communication help you to see what the neuroscientists are suggesting? It is worth noting that we, as a species, DO seem to have a built-in drive to learn and use spoken communication, but that drive is not as closely linked to reading and writing which are ways of capturing and sharing communication more broadly. Think about what you need to pay attention to and coordinate if you are to have a successful and hopefully non-confrontational conversation with someone else about current or local events. You need to process what they are saying, what they do or might mean, how that is influenced or is revealing of their emotional state (especially if that is changing), how you are feeling, what you are thinking about (both in terms of immediate conversational meaning and about what might be involved at deeper levels of meaning) and whether you are making the sorts of sense you want to make in what you are saying. All of that is NOT a one or two brain area task. It involves ongoing dynamic connections among several areas of your brain AND it involves the monitoring of how that is all going. If brain functioning is more about connections across/between brain areas THAT would be a potentially more productive starting point for investigating individual differences in brain structure and functioning. I for one and interested in hearing or reading more about this approach, how about you?
Questions for Discussion:
- What does the approach to brain functioning that focusses upon the role that specific brain regions play in aspects of our general functioning?
- What would a connections approach to investigating brain functioning do or make possible for us?
- How does a brain focused account of how we engage in conversation lead us to a possible approach to better understanding individual differences in brain structure and function (especially following lesion or stroke damage)?
References (Read Further):
De Schotten, M.T. & Forkel, S.J. (2022) The emergent properties of the connected brain. Science, 378 (6619) Abstract
Sporns, O., & Betzel, R. F. (2016). Modular brain networks. Annual review of psychology, 67, 613. Link
Padmanabhan, J. L., Cooke, D., Joutsa, J., Siddiqi, S. H., Ferguson, M., Darby, R. R., … & Fox, M. D. (2019). A human depression circuit derived from focal brain lesions. Biological psychiatry, 86(10), 749-758. Link
Cole, M. W., Pathak, S., & Schneider, W. (2010). Identifying the brain’s most globally connected regions. Neuroimage, 49(4), 3132-3148. Link
Fox, M. D. (2018). Mapping symptoms to brain networks with the human connectome. New England Journal of Medicine, 379(23), 2237-2245. Link
Fleming, S. M., Weil, R. S., Nagy, Z., Dolan, R. J., & Rees, G. (2010). Relating introspective accuracy to individual differences in brain structure. Science, 329(5998), 1541-1543. Link
Banissy, M. J., Kanai, R., Walsh, V., & Rees, G. (2012). Inter-individual differences in empathy are reflected in human brain structure. Neuroimage, 62(3), 2034-2039. Link
Beaty, R. E., Seli, P., & Schacter, D. L. (2019). Network neuroscience of creative cognition: mapping cognitive mechanisms and individual differences in the creative brain. Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 27, 22-30. Link