Of neuroscience and psychology

Recently I've been going through Calvin & Ojemann's "Conversations with Neil's Brain." A neurosurgeon and neurophysiologist describe the stimulation of the brain of an epileptic brain to identify specific areas for sensation,language memory etc.
Their basic premise is that all of our cognitive, personality, and emotional functions can be "explained" or understood as nervous system activity. 'Don't waste
time trying to interpret dreams,[ they advise. 'It is merely noise in the nervous system.' The book is interesting but leaves me somewhat disturbed by its dismissive atttiude toward 150 years of psychological science. Like many in the medical sciences, they are just not interested in subjective events, let alone the philosophical implications of the mind-body problem. Even my retinologist who, saved my sight over fifteen years ago, never asks what I actually see. His examination is focussed solely on the flatness of my retina. Several years ago I wrote several books for Facts on File, a publisher of books for middle and secondary school students. The consulting editor for their Gray matter series insisted I devote half of each book to the brain. I complied reluctantly in order to get the books published but turned three well-written and interesting texts into rather boring and repetitive expositions on brain structure.
Sharon Begley's Feb. 9 "On Science" article in Newsweek offers me some hope that neuroscientists are waking up. Titled "Of Voodoo and the Brain" it describes criticism from within the neuroscience community that the correlations reported
in neuroscience journals are inflated (0.9? Come on!)and due to the misuse of statistical reasoning. She didn't also explain that correlations don't imply cause and effect. Nevertheless, BRAVO to the maverick neuroscientists and to Sharon Begley.