Neuromania & neurononsense revisited: training your brain

Am having a bit of a downer on New Scientist, I know but they’ve tumbled lazily into another trope in the behavioural science: the notion that we are our brains and our behaviour is best understood through the lens of neuroscience.

I know it’s just a populist piece but please…

I’ve written endlessly about this so won’t dwell long on why this is wrong but suicide is a great example: it’s not best understood as the result of something in the individual’s head but in the space between people. Thinking about human behaviour as primarily an individual phenomenon misses much of the juice…

Too much “neurononsense” and not enough social science?