Connectomics is the effort to completely map the neuronal connections of the human brain. It is akin to genomics – the mapping of the human genome, or its successor, proteomics – the mapping of the human repertoire of proteins. Connectomic has taken a huge leap with a newly published study that uses MRI techniques to map brain connections.

An international team of researchers used a recently developed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique known as diffusion MRI to image the pathway that bundles of neural connections take through the brain. Essentially, MRI scans use a powerful magnet to align protons in water molecules in tissues like the brain. It then uses a perpendicular magnetic field to push some of the protons out of alignment and then measure the radio signal that is created when the second field is turned off and the protons flip back. Different tissues have different water content and other properties that cause them to generate different MRI signals. MRI scientists have found numerous clever ways of manipulating this basic technique, in addition to improving the computers and software used to analyze the resulting signals, producing not only better MRI images but new ways of imaging brain anatomy and function. Diffusion MRI is just one of these special MRI techniques.

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Regular readers may have noticed that I occasionally get hostile comments in my blog. I would be shocked if I didn’t – in fact I would worry that I was not doing my job if I did not regularly infuriate the purveyors of nonsense and promoters of anti-science. I frequently respond, even to the most inane of such comments, if I think it will be instructive to point out common fallacies and misconceptions.

Sometimes I view comments from a sociological point of view – they may demonstrate a social phenomenon worthy of discussion.

I recently received this comment in response to my blog on facilitated communication. Gigi Jordon (writing as “Holly Light”) commits so many fallacies that any meaningful treatment requires a separate blog entry, so here it is. She begins:

Hey Steve Novella,

What a load of arrogant pseudoscientific self aggrandizing tripe. Truly!…….. First of all I used to observe from an relatively anonymous standpoint patients being seen at the most elite levels of academic medicine on the east coast over a period of 10 years being treated for lets say motor neuropathies. These patients, inevitably would become frustrated with the limits of either the treatments offered or the bedside manor of their physicians or some combination of both, and go to another equally pedigreed academic neurologist say……….Latov or Dalakis , et. all…………. It was a big joke among my cohorts at the time that every time the patient switched to a new big wig in academic neurology, say every 3-5 years on average, and for the lay audience, I’m talking the best neurologic specialists in this highly specialized field of medicine in the world, people Steve Novella would look up to by the way…….. The patient would get a new diagnosis! MMN (multi motor neuropathy), No wait – now it’s CIDP! (chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy), no, no, wait its dermatomyocytis!
So brilliant are you all at the mental masturbatory facility of your “science”. So very objective!

Holly opens up with the “arrogant” gambit. This is a cheap shot that anti-intellectuals frequently trot out because it’s easy. Any pretense to knowledge can be attacked as “elitist” and “arrogant” – it is an attempt to get people on your side by implying, “This person is not one of us regular folks, they think they are better than us.” It is a dismissive ad hominem logical fallacy – attempting to dismiss a person’s position by attacking the person.

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