Brain Scans and the Desire to Avoid a New 'Phrenology'

So . . . the brain is an integrated network: "The functional activity of the brain . . . is nearly as invisible to us as the atom, and so we employ metaphors. Over the centuries the brain has been compared to a hydraulic machine (18th century), a mechanical calculator (19th century) and an electronic computer (20th century). Today a popular metaphor is that the brain is like a Swiss Army knife, with specialized modules for vision, language, facial recognition, cheating detection, risk taking, spirituality and even God. . . . A consensus is building that '[m]ental modules are complete nonsense. There are no modules that are encapsulated and just send information into a central processor. There are areas of specialization, yes, and networks maybe, but these are not always dedicated to a particular task.' Instead of mental module metaphors, let us use neural networks.