Neuroimaging is widely regarded as the key to understanding everything we do, but the authors of a controversial new book, Brainwashed, claim this approach is misguided and dangerous

What would it mean to live in a world in which people are simply mechanical devices responding to natural laws beyond their control, bobbing like corks in a sea of causes?

It is easy to see why the brain is a hot commodity. As the organ of the self, it makes sense to think that understanding how the brain works can help us understand ourselves, repair our flaws, and perfect our nature.

Join New York Times columnist David Brooks as he engages the authors of “Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience” Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld, in a discussion of popular neuroscience.

Many people think that if [there is activity] in the brain, whatever behavior flows from it is involuntary. Sometimes that is the case, but you cannot draw that inference just from looking at a brain scan.

You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to find the subject of how our brains work fascinating. As Sally Satel points out in an interview with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez, because the “brain is a very attractive topic to both readers and journalists . . . the sheer numbers of articles present many opportunities for the dissemination of overwrought claims.”

If the body can’t be trusted to reliably betray its secrets, would going straight to the brain, the organ of deceit, be a better way to reveal deception?