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This concluding chapter suggests that for the human sciences, there is nothing to fear in the rise to prominence of neurobiological attempt to understand and account for human behavior. It is important to point out the many weaknesses in the experimental setups and procedures, for example, in the uses of animal models and in the interpretations of brain imaging data generated in the highly artificial social situations of the laboratory. In the necessity for this criticism, there is also opportunity. There are many opportunities for a more positive role for the social and human sciences that engages directly with these truth claims, that seizes on the new openness provided by conceptions of the neuromolecular, plastic, and social brain to find some rapprochement.

This chapter focuses on the importance of extensive and obvious meta-analysis of brain image data. Lack of statistical data due to the variability of experimental data unable to differentiate actual neural correlates and random artifacts is the main reason for the use of meta-analysis. The chapter discusses the challenges of creating a database by pooling the experimental results along with stating the complexity of statistical manipulations used for meta-analysis. Different types of meta-analysis developed over the years have been explored along with sources of problems of the meta-analysis. The chapter discusses spatial localization, which is the form in which brain imaging devices results are presented, and also three different modes of responding activation areas. It presents the different methods through which brain activation regions can be located.

This chapter discusses how brain-imaging tools have provided new insights and modified theories on memory. In particular, it emphasizes that psychological distinctions between functionally encapsulated modules handling either working memory or long-term memory encoding and retrieval or being specialized on specific sub-processes have to be questioned on the basis of brain-imaging data.

This chapter examines neuropsychological and non-human animal findings and discusses ways in which neuroimaging research has advanced our understanding of memory systems in the human brain. It focuses on the question of whether brain-imaging data can decide between unitary vs. multiple memory systems, i.e. whether information is stored, consolidated, and retrieved always within one and the same biological substrate or whether distinct systems are involved depending on the type of material or task.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the five constraints on the ability to predict mental or behavioral outcomes based on brain data. Some psychologists and neuroscientists fail to attribute sufficient power to the context of observation. The subject's expectations comprise a second constraint on inferences. Meanwhile, a large number of investigators studying brain–behavior relations resist Niels Bohr's insight that the validity of every conclusion depends on its source of evidence. One reason why brain and psychological data yield conclusions with differing validities is that some brain measures are subject to the effects of bodily processes that exert minimal effects on many psychological observations. The last constraint to be considered is the practice of borrowing predicates whose meanings and validities originated in psychological measures gathered on human subjects and applying them to brain patterns, or to animals.