ABSTRACT
Why does it look like we know so much when we know so little? Because a majority of our historical information about cognition, learning, and memory comes from the study of species other than ourselves. The advent of neuroimaging technologies and primarily functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; Bandettini et al. 1992; Kwong et al. 1992) has given us the ability to examine ourselves, but these technologies are relatively recent innovations. In relation to education, neuroimaging seems to be a natural application for understanding what goes on during the embodiment of learning. When educators ask a question about the neural basis of a behavior, they are-by virtue of the level that they practice, dealing with children in a social learning environment-deriving their curiosity from a different orientation than a cognitive neuroscientist would. For example, imagine you are driving down the street and a squirrel runs in front of your car. In less than one half of one second, multiple systems of the human brain engage to coordinate the driver’s awareness of the squirrel, the desire not to hit the squirrel, the hesitation that comes with deciding whether to veer off course, the assessment of the consequences of each action, and
The Paradox of Public Perception and the Strengths and Limits of Neuroimaging Technology ....................................................................................... 37 The Paradox of Environmental In¢uence on Cognition ..........................................40 Sharpening the Alignment of and Expectations for Social Neuroscience and Gaming Paradigms ................................................................................................... 41 References ................................................................................................................ 43
the subsequent coordination to continue forward. On the other hand, a cognitive neuroscientist may watch the same episode and wonder about the timing in the visual cortex between the areas that coordinate object recognition, location, and motion detection that came online so the person could safely and successfully resolve the episode. Neither perspective is an incorrect observation of the moment. This illustrates, however, that the public has great expectations for the role of neuroimaging and related technologies to reveal new information about ourselves that neuroscience has yet to achieve.
