Starting today, ScienceBlogs is introducing a new-and-improved feature that allows you, dear reader, to tap into the brain-power and expertise of the ScienceBlogs collective mind—all to answer your most burning questions about matters scientific.
Every couple of weeks, a ScienceBlogs blogger will craft a succinct, specific answer to a question from his or her area of expertise. The answer will be linked from the ScienceBlogs main page, and it's our hope that response and commentary and even more questions will flow freely after.
The kick-off question for the series is inspired by modern neuroscience. The last couple of decades have seen staggering advances in our understanding of the brain. Although there's a long way left to go, it sometimes seems as though we can at least imagine a day when every facet of human behavior and experience will be explainable with reference to neurons, neurotransmitters, and action potentials. So where does this leave Rorschach tests and old-fashioned psychology experiments, not to mention concepts like the ego and the id that now, at times, seem downright quaint? Is neuroscience making psychology obsolete?
Dave and Greta Munger, of the excellent psychology blog Cognitive Daily, bravely volunteered to answer the following question:
- What's the difference between psychology and neuroscience? Is psychology still relevant as we learn more about the brain and how it works?
In the reply, they argue that we are a long, long, long way from being able to get along without psychology—and that some of the most exciting insights that are likely to be made into human behavior will come as a result of psychologists and neuroscientists cooperating with each other.
But don't take our word for it. Read the answer and add your voice to the discussion about it, at Cognitive Daily.
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