It’s 2026. You’re on social media. The brain is everywhere.
“Your brain has been sabotaging you—but not anymore.” “I read this neuroscience article so you don’t have to.” “Neuroplasticity means you can become anyone you want. Literally.” “I help high performers align their neurons with their destiny. Follow NeuroAlchemy™ to learn more!”
The brain has occupied the limelight in public discourse for a long time. From papyrus scrolls in 1700 BC Egypt to the latest publications in Neuron, people have dissected, preserved, experimented on, and written about the brain in all its glory and mystery. We now know which parts of the brain store memories, which parts help you make decisions, and which parts are the earliest to atrophy when age catches up. But there has simultaneously been a rise in neuroskepticism: scientists have questioned the extent and reliability of this knowledge, especially concerning the use of functional MRI (fMRI), the leading measurement technique in brain research today. There have been “voodoo” results in social neuroscience (Vul et al., 2009), a dead salmon allegedly showing neural activity (Bennett et al., 2009), and a couple hundred doctored images in state-of-the-art Alzheimer’s research (Science, 2024). Nevertheless, errors were identified, debated, and resolved. People moved on.
So what’s the problem?
Much of this criticism—and subsequent redressal—has been limited to academic circles. Public hype around neuroscience, colloquially referred to as neuromania, has only grown. The brain has become a cultural phenomenon: everybody you know is talking about the latest “brain-hack” to fight procrastination, or taking a NeuroLeadership course, or worrying about whether doomscrolling is causing too much “dopamine release”. Enter the non-fiction section of a bookstore and you are likely to find a book that tells you why you’re lazy, and three other books on how you can unlock the secrets of the brain and be less lazy. Your usual New York Times Bestsellers. One wonders, then, if this is all part of a large business model where invoking the brain adds a kind of authority, or mystery, to what is either ordinary advice or gross oversimplification of neuroscience research.
The 1820s saw phrenology (affectionately nicknamed “bumpology”), the belief that your mental abilities can be determined from the shape of your skull. Today we have left-brained and right-brained personalities, the amygdala with its legacy of being the so-called “fear centre”, and functional localisation, or the idea that each brain region has a specific function.
As it turns out, there is no evidence that people have a stronger left- or right-sided brain network (Nielsen et al., 2013). Humans show widespread neural activation in response to learned fear, but not in the amygdala (Visser et al., 2021). And it’s very rare for any mental activity to be situated neatly in one network of neurons, much less one region of the brain (Salehi et al., 2020). But is it ever really that serious?
After decades of research, neuroscientists now know enough about the brain to name its parts, image its activity, catalogue its chemicals, and still be cautious about explaining all human behaviour using neural terms. Why, then, are self-proclaimed neuro-gurus on social media so confident about the brain being the “all-purpose non-explanation explanation of everything” (Gopnik, 2013)?
“Neuroscience says –” Neuroscience likely says no such thing. Anything neuroscience says can rarely be condensed into an attractive, clickbaity, TikTok friendly one-liner that aims to keep you from scrolling away. Not falling for this online trap is an exercise in neuroskepticism. Of course, it is important that science done in highly-controlled, walled-off labs reaches the general public, and luckily, social media makes it happen. Neuro-nonsense is an unfortunate but inevitable by-product. Until then, it is helpful to remember what the anonymous writer of the blog Neuroskeptic said: “I do not think that we know nearly enough about the brain to be able to give advice on parenting, leadership, or social issues”. Not yet, at least. By the time we do, maybe the collective mania will have shifted to something else.
Photo by Europeana
It’s 2026. You’re on social media. The brain is everywhere.
“Your brain has been sabotaging you—but not anymore.” “I read this neuroscience article so you don’t have to.” “Neuroplasticity means you can become anyone you want. Literally.” “I help high performers align their neurons with their destiny. Follow NeuroAlchemy™ to learn more!”
The brain has occupied the limelight in public discourse for a long time. From papyrus scrolls in 1700 BC Egypt to the latest publications in Neuron, people have dissected, preserved, experimented on, and written about the brain in all its glory and mystery. We now know which parts of the brain store memories, which parts help you make decisions, and which parts are the earliest to atrophy when age catches up. But there has simultaneously been a rise in neuroskepticism: scientists have questioned the extent and reliability of this knowledge, especially concerning the use of functional MRI (fMRI), the leading measurement technique in brain research today. There have been “voodoo” results in social neuroscience (Vul et al., 2009), a dead salmon allegedly showing neural activity (Bennett et al., 2009), and a couple hundred doctored images in state-of-the-art Alzheimer’s research (Science, 2024). Nevertheless, errors were identified, debated, and resolved. People moved on.
So what’s the problem?
Much of this criticism—and subsequent redressal—has been limited to academic circles. Public hype around neuroscience, colloquially referred to as neuromania, has only grown. The brain has become a cultural phenomenon: everybody you know is talking about the latest “brain-hack” to fight procrastination, or taking a NeuroLeadership course, or worrying about whether doomscrolling is causing too much “dopamine release”. Enter the non-fiction section of a bookstore and you are likely to find a book that tells you why you’re lazy, and three other books on how you can unlock the secrets of the brain and be less lazy. Your usual New York Times Bestsellers. One wonders, then, if this is all part of a large business model where invoking the brain adds a kind of authority, or mystery, to what is either ordinary advice or gross oversimplification of neuroscience research.
The 1820s saw phrenology (affectionately nicknamed “bumpology”), the belief that your mental abilities can be determined from the shape of your skull. Today we have left-brained and right-brained personalities, the amygdala with its legacy of being the so-called “fear centre”, and functional localisation, or the idea that each brain region has a specific function.
As it turns out, there is no evidence that people have a stronger left- or right-sided brain network (Nielsen et al., 2013). Humans show widespread neural activation in response to learned fear, but not in the amygdala (Visser et al., 2021). And it’s very rare for any mental activity to be situated neatly in one network of neurons, much less one region of the brain (Salehi et al., 2020). But is it ever really that serious?
After decades of research, neuroscientists now know enough about the brain to name its parts, image its activity, catalogue its chemicals, and still be cautious about explaining all human behaviour using neural terms. Why, then, are self-proclaimed neuro-gurus on social media so confident about the brain being the “all-purpose non-explanation explanation of everything” (Gopnik, 2013)?
“Neuroscience says –” Neuroscience likely says no such thing. Anything neuroscience says can rarely be condensed into an attractive, clickbaity, TikTok friendly one-liner that aims to keep you from scrolling away. Not falling for this online trap is an exercise in neuroskepticism. Of course, it is important that science done in highly-controlled, walled-off labs reaches the general public, and luckily, social media makes it happen. Neuro-nonsense is an unfortunate but inevitable by-product. Until then, it is helpful to remember what the anonymous writer of the blog Neuroskeptic said: “I do not think that we know nearly enough about the brain to be able to give advice on parenting, leadership, or social issues”. Not yet, at least. By the time we do, maybe the collective mania will have shifted to something else.
