We are preparing a critical assessment of what neuroscience can and cannot say about mind, behaviour and therapy. It will take several months. Here is what we are doing and what it rests on.

What we are preparing

  • Which papers carry the field’s claims. A map of the most-cited work in functional MRI, EEG, MEG, PET and near-infrared imaging — and, more importantly, of the concepts those papers introduced and how the concepts support one another.
  • What the instruments physically measure. For each method: the quantity measured, the instrument chain, resolution, noise and drift, and the model that turns a physical signal into a statement about neurons. Written in the language of physics, from public specifications and methods papers.
  • What mathematics is actually applied. The statistical methods used in practice, their assumptions, their software implementations, and their documented failures and successes.
  • A synthesis — where the field can speak with authority, where the grey zone begins, and where it cannot qualify a judgement.

What it rests on

  • Public sources only: open citation indices, published papers, manufacturers‘ specifications, software documentation.
  • Every number traceable to a stored data file with its query and date; every quotation with its page.
  • Every item checked twice before it enters the conclusions.
  • The sharpest critiques we start from come from inside neuroscience, and they are cited first.

Why here

Body-oriented therapy is often asked to justify itself in the language of brain imaging. Before answering, it is worth knowing exactly how much that language can carry. No conclusions will appear on this site until the whole assessment is done. Progress notes will appear as short posts.

Status as of 9 October 2026

Part 1 (corpus map) is closed; Part 2 (physics of measurement) and Part 3 (statistics) are open. For one of the most-cited resting-state papers the whole chain of inference has been taken apart step by step; the same for three pairs of papers, each an original claim and its later check — among them one on meditation and brain structure. A short piece on it awaits the author’s reading and appears in the coming weeks. Still no conclusions; the method is unchanged, except that a list of our own errors has been added.