The gap in causality in neuroscience

In a JAMA Psychiatry viewpoint, Amit Etkin suggests that brain neuroimaging risks creating ‘Just-So Stories', internally consistent explanations that have no basis in fact. Nonetheless, he still seems to believe that direct experimental manipulations can overcome this challenge.

The problem is more fundamental. Generating massive amounts of data from neuroimaging of the brain, which is only looking at part of a person, misses the point that whole persons have intrinsic purpose. People cannot be investigated as machines in the same way that their brains can be when they are considered in isolation. No wonder there’s a gap in neuroscientific explanation.