Posted by Estella on September 1, 2006, at 13:41:58
In reply to Re: Biopsychosocial vs Biological Reductionism » Estella, posted by yxibow on September 1, 2006, at 4:27:43
> Well true insults aside...
I'm not intending to insult anybody.
> key scientific individuals whose intellectual product have helped save the lives of thousands of people with OCD...
That is precisely the question I'm asking: How has neuroimaging 'helped save the lives' of anyone with OCD? How is finding neurological differences (across averages of populations) of any relevance to anything?
> when at a time it was just a "neurotic" disorder
*Just* a "neurotic" disorder? What do you take to be the "neurotic" vs "legitimate" disorders (I expect that is the distinction you are trying to make)? Do you really mean to imply that somehow disorders with pretty neuroimaging (across populations) are somehow *legit* whereas disorders without pretty neuroimagine (across populations) are somehow *neurotic* / non legit?
> OCD was clearly based on biological underpinnings.
Across averages of populations. Can you hear the difference? I don't know how you define *normal* compared to *averages across populations* but my bet is that even when you find differences in the averages across populations that doesn't entail anything at all for the neurological detail within the individual. If you really think that neurological differences are the marker for different mental illnesses then you will find that... Making this up... Say, half of the individuals with OCD have no significant differences neurologically than people without OCD. There aren't neurological markers. It is as simple as that. You could of course maintain that there *are* differences it is just that we haven't found them as yet. That is to make a significant empirical bet on something that we currently have no evidence for, however. If you scanned peoples brains with schizophrenia and OCD fact is that most of them... Would fall in line with controls. There are a few individuals who deviate radically enough to throw the whole populations average off course (which is why it is done on the level of populations and not individuals). Most people with mental illness have... Surprisingly (perhaps) normal brains. So much the worse for... Notions of mental illness. Lol.
> if you gave a sufferer a dirty rag and a control the same, areas of the brain normally not thought to possess suchprocessing energy light up, for example.
The colours that are chosen to represent different levels of activation are completely arbitrary. Researchers tend to choose the colours that make up the most impressive visual display. Lol. The actual difference between levels of activation varies depending on how you define *statistically significant difference*. How do phobics brains *light up* when they are presented with a picture of the object they are phobic of? How does that compare to OCD controls?
> 2% of the population will have an OCD breakthrough at least once in their lifetime.So their brains differ from normal and then... Spontaneously switch back again?
> That's what brain imaging has increasingly helped in demonstrably showing.
How has brain imaging helped with that? OCD is defined by behavioural criteria not by neuroimaging criteria and neuroimaging is a hopeless predictor of behaviour.
> I can't argue circular logic that if everybody is the same then everybody is the same.
But people are different. Both normal people and different people with the same dx. If you are hoping for similarities across different people with the same dx... You tend to find there is considerable variation across *normal* brains so fairly unsurprisingly you find the same considerable variation across OCD brains or the brains of populations with any dx you care to think of...
> I agree with the idea that the patient is not just a number or a statistic,
Or an average...
> but biological reductionist models help us understand complex systems in intricate ways never thought before.
Do they? That is precisely what I am calling into question. The point at issue is:
How much do biological reductionist models actually help us understand
1) mental illness across population types
2) my particular variety of difficulty?> If you believe brain imaging has no basis, I cannot argue science over pseudorationalization. MRIs clearly show an increasingly accurate diagnosis as to whether cancer exists, etc.
We aren't talking about cancer we are talking about mental illness. You might have something approaching a litmus test for cancer but there is nothing comperable to that with respect to mental illness. If you neuroimage someones brain you can't use that for dx. So... How much does neuroimaging help accurate dx of mental illness???
> And when SPECT and other technologies are perfected, who knows what we will discover...
Well that is the question really. I say... Not a lot.
poster:Estella
thread:680731
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060901/msgs/682060.html