Posted by Willful on July 14, 2013, at 10:46:30
In reply to Re: Images of 'Damaged' Brains? Or Bad Science?, posted by linkadge on July 13, 2013, at 20:29:07
Daniel Amen is a psychiatrist and seems to have clinics staffed by psychiatrists, which leads me to wonder how he got his training in neurology and the interpretation of brain scans.
I also wonder how the images were generated-- and why there are almost no shadows of any sort on the normal brain while there are tons of shadow on the brains on caffeine and cigarettes. It's pretty easy to manipulate images and these images seems pretty simple-- just a flattish slice of a brain--which looks like a green sponge, some of what have stronger shadows than others. I find myself questioning what if anything was done to enhance the images. Why, by the way, are they green?
Having read stories similar to those the Linkage cites, I have to be pretty skeptical about these images. Plus people who drink more than 5 cups of coffee a day have somewhat greater longevity. So it's hard for me to believe coffee is eating away at their brains. And while scientists have been refining their ability to diagnose alzheimer's, as Phillipa points out, I don't think the methods involve SPECT--
I have no idea if Daviel Amen is a scam artist, or just someone who is not qualified to make the claims he's making and doesn't present the research basis for them. There are various brain imaging tools-- SPECT isn't as frequently referred to, at least-- well, I admit, on internet news sites--perhaps not the best source. But there are a lot of unanswered questions here.---Are coffee and caffeine the only possible explanations of the conditions of these brain?- what type of research has he done to establish his interpretations, and to verify that no other explanations are available? Do these conditions evince themselves in every brain of every smoker, etc? And if not, why isn't that reflected in his statements?
Since many other psychiatrists question the legitimacy of the scans, I wouldn't assume that they show anything except a rather crude and possibly (slightly) manipulated version of what various brains look like.
As such, I would simply ignore them-- or before relying on them, do a lot more reading about brain imaging and where the science of imaging is.
Emsam.
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poster:Willful
thread:1047108
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20130706/msgs/1047161.html