I don't want to be too critical, because I've learned a lot from the author's books, but a fair amount of the article (mainly myths 1 and 2) seem to be over-generalization or skewed based on the author's bias. Her field is psychology, not primarily neuroscience; specifically, the psychology (and some neuroscience of) emotion. I recommend Jeff Hawkins's new book for a perspective closer to a neuroscientist's. (He's technically not a neuroscience Ph.D., but he has equivalent knowledge.)
Myth #1: Brain areas aren't separate and didn't evolve in stages.
1. Brain (neocortex) areas aren't single-purpose. Obviously neuroplasticity is a thing, but the article ignores that areas of the brain develop to be focused on a single category of tasks (visual, auditory, etc.). The author's example, blindfolding someone and watching their visual cortex get repurposed when learning to read braille, ignores that if you don't blindfold them, other areas will probably take up most of the task of learning braille because it's not a visual activity and the brain tends to separate areas of responsibility.
2. The number of significant evolutionary steps may not be just three, so the triune brain theory may be technically false, but I've never seen any actual neuroscientist argue that it isn't roughly accurate. The evidence in the article is molecular genetics: the fact that there aren't radically different kinds of neurons. This is like scaling up an argument that ethanol and glucose are the same thing because they share the same elements. If the limbic system and neocortex have roughly the same kind of neurons, what does that matter? We know they serve radically different purposes, and we know that reptiles don't have a neocortex (at least, nothing of significance).
Myth #2: Brain is stimulus/response machine
Her argument against this myth seems tortured. Of course the brain is not a simple impulse/response machine, but it's still essentially taking in inputs and responding in various ways. It just has a mind-bogglingly complex internal state.
Myth #3: Strong dividing line between diseases of the brain and body
Everything seems to point to her being right on this one. Science knows, nearly as much as it can know anything, that neurological stress leads to physical stress responses which can screw up other parts of the body, often through hormone dysregulation. Similarly, physical problems from gut health to inflammation can trigger immune responses or simpler biochemical reactions that have neurological side-effects. And, of course, diet. Psychoactive drugs are a clear example of how an external physical influence can have psychological effects.
> Myth #3: Strong dividing line between diseases of the brain and body
> Everything seems to point to her being right on this one.
The problem is that most of the time people debunk this "myth" they are using some motte-and-bailey tricks.
First, there is no perfect dividing line between disease of the brain and body, but there is also no perfect dividing line between diseases of the brain and differences of the brain (do domestic abusers have bad character or a disease?) or between diseases of different organs. Nevertheless, it is highly useful to have a taxonomy of phenomena that cuts reality roughly at its joints. These divisions have important practical and moral implications, and they fact that there are gray areas does not mean the categories should be undermined.
Second, these seemingly scientific "there is no line" arguments are almost always used asymmetrically by experts to advance a normative position, e.g., my psychological disease should be treated like a physiological disease by the law and my friends because there is no perfect distinction between the psychological and physical. It is possible to go in the other direction and argue that many/most alleged psychological diseases are really just different preferences and should be treated as such; see Thomas Szasz:
This is just as well supported by "there is no line" argument as folks who want physiological-psychological disease equality. The reason the latter position is more popularly is based on values.
I was originally against the authors take on Myth one as well, but then I considered that my perspective may have been somewhat different from the one they were actually talking about and I sort of incorrectly translated it. Maybe they were speaking directly against a much more harsh version of the 'each part of the brain does one thing' than we interpret it. Not as a 'the visual cortex handles most of our conscious sight' but 'the visual cortex only handles sight and all sight is handled by the visual cortex only'. That is much stricter and much quickly disproven. As someone with an interest in neuroscience, I have long since been exposed to evidence that would prevent me from ever considering the second idea as being the possible answer, but perhaps others have not. If we consider someone who has myths on how the brain works but has never taken as much as an intro psychology class and instead bases their opinion on what they hear in passing from others, such as news sources or daily talk shows, then it is possible some people have the second idea as their mental model for the brain.
If that is the case, then I do think the author has made a slight blunder because the audience who would read their article is unlikely to include significant portions of people who would've lacked the exposure needed to have that much stricter and more incorrect mental model, and thus the author could've done better to present the myth so as to not confuse it with the not as incorrect mental model of the brain that their likely readers have.
> Her argument against this myth seems tortured. Of course the brain is not a simple impulse/response machine, but it's still essentially taking in inputs and responding in various ways. It just has a mind-bogglingly complex internal state.
The author was dispelling the myth that a significant fraction (or all) of neural activity happens between the time of the stimulus and time of the response, which is probably a common misperception.
Myth #1: Brain areas aren't separate and didn't evolve in stages.
1. Brain (neocortex) areas aren't single-purpose. Obviously neuroplasticity is a thing, but the article ignores that areas of the brain develop to be focused on a single category of tasks (visual, auditory, etc.). The author's example, blindfolding someone and watching their visual cortex get repurposed when learning to read braille, ignores that if you don't blindfold them, other areas will probably take up most of the task of learning braille because it's not a visual activity and the brain tends to separate areas of responsibility.
2. The number of significant evolutionary steps may not be just three, so the triune brain theory may be technically false, but I've never seen any actual neuroscientist argue that it isn't roughly accurate. The evidence in the article is molecular genetics: the fact that there aren't radically different kinds of neurons. This is like scaling up an argument that ethanol and glucose are the same thing because they share the same elements. If the limbic system and neocortex have roughly the same kind of neurons, what does that matter? We know they serve radically different purposes, and we know that reptiles don't have a neocortex (at least, nothing of significance).
Myth #2: Brain is stimulus/response machine
Her argument against this myth seems tortured. Of course the brain is not a simple impulse/response machine, but it's still essentially taking in inputs and responding in various ways. It just has a mind-bogglingly complex internal state.
Myth #3: Strong dividing line between diseases of the brain and body
Everything seems to point to her being right on this one. Science knows, nearly as much as it can know anything, that neurological stress leads to physical stress responses which can screw up other parts of the body, often through hormone dysregulation. Similarly, physical problems from gut health to inflammation can trigger immune responses or simpler biochemical reactions that have neurological side-effects. And, of course, diet. Psychoactive drugs are a clear example of how an external physical influence can have psychological effects.