Do You Believe in God, or Is That a Software Glitch? / New York Times, August 2016.
"But a study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences uncovered flaws in the software researchers rely on to analyze fM.R.I. data. The glitch can cause false positives — suggesting brain activity where there is none — up to 70 percent of the time.
[...]
But when you divide the brain into bitty bits and make millions of calculations according to a bunch of inferences, there are abundant opportunities for error, particularly when you are relying on software to do much of the work. This was made glaringly apparent back in 2009, when a graduate student conducted an fM.R.I. scan of a dead salmon and found neural activity in its brain when it was shown photographs of humans in social situations. Again, it was a salmon. And it was dead."
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Impressive collection of reviews in current issue of Neuron looks back on 25 years of neuroscience research http://t.co/MYuBrUVDT7 #neuron25
— Steve Fleming (@smfleming) October 30, 2013