© Voisin / Phanie / RexA closed geometry magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit. Research using brain scanners has been criticised for poor methodology.
Some of the hottest results in the nascent field of social neuroscience, in which emotions and behavioural traits are linked to activity in a particular region of the brain, may be inflated and in some cases entirely spurious.
So say psychologist Hal Pashler at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues, who examined more than 50 studies that relied on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans, many published in high-profile journals, and questioned the authors about their methods.
Pashler's team say that in most of the studies, which linked brain regions to feelings including social rejection, neuroticism and jealousy, researchers interpreted their data using a method that inflates the strength of the link between a brain region and the emotion or behaviour.
The claim is disputed by at least two of the critiqued groups. Both argue that Pashler has misunderstood their results and that their conclusions are backed by other studies.
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