To your first point, I'm not sure how this helps the sufferers. What they have shown is that there is a different neural signature correlating with a different emotional response. There's no causal link here, meaning that I might
still tell someone to just shrug it off. Maybe they can control their neural activity, just like I can control my neural activity related to thinking about elephants by not thinking about elephants.
To your second point, I would offer two responses. First, while being able to measure something is a win in itself, we need to be clear about what they're measuring. They have shown that suffering ailment X increases the probability that they find neural signature X. They do not know the reverse, meaning this isn't going to unlock early diagnostics or anything. It is unclear how discriminating this response is. Second, it's not clear that this is the product/effect of the way their "brain is wired". Perhaps changes in neural activity caused the observations of different neural connectivity. Perhaps some other factor of their experience or biology caused this sensitivity and the visible differences in connectivity, neural activity, etc. We just don't know.
(P.S. Listening to people eat drives me insane. I'm not going to self-diagnose, but I just want to be clear that I'm not criticizing the finding/report because of a lack of empathy for the sufferers.)
(P.P.S. I'm a recovering cognitive scientist who had to hear about a lot of neuropsych findings that all boiled down to, "This part of the brain lights up when we hear/see/do this! Give me another $5mm grant!").
To your second point, I would offer two responses. First, while being able to measure something is a win in itself, we need to be clear about what they're measuring. They have shown that suffering ailment X increases the probability that they find neural signature X. They do not know the reverse, meaning this isn't going to unlock early diagnostics or anything. It is unclear how discriminating this response is. Second, it's not clear that this is the product/effect of the way their "brain is wired". Perhaps changes in neural activity caused the observations of different neural connectivity. Perhaps some other factor of their experience or biology caused this sensitivity and the visible differences in connectivity, neural activity, etc. We just don't know.
(P.S. Listening to people eat drives me insane. I'm not going to self-diagnose, but I just want to be clear that I'm not criticizing the finding/report because of a lack of empathy for the sufferers.)
(P.P.S. I'm a recovering cognitive scientist who had to hear about a lot of neuropsych findings that all boiled down to, "This part of the brain lights up when we hear/see/do this! Give me another $5mm grant!").