60 Minutes must have a thing for neuro-research. Following on from their November story on Brain-Computer Interfaces, the news magazine has just run a piece on the application of functional MRIs for "thought identification" research.
It's a balanced, if shallow piece, but I was irritated by reporter Lesley Stahl's folkish reluctance to accept that thought is physically based. Fortunately, she was kept in check by a rational thinking neuroscientist, Marcel Just:
"It's breathtaking," Stahl said. "And kind of eerie."
"Well, you know, I think the reason people have that reaction is because it reveals the essence of what it means to be a person. All of those kinds of things that define us as human beings are brain patterns," Just replied.
"We don't wanna know that… it all boils down to, I don't know, molecules and things like that," Stahl said.
"But we are, you know, we are biological creatures. You know, our limbs we accept are, you know, muscles and bone. And our brain is a biological thinking machine," he replied.
