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Improving the study of brain-behavior relationships by revisiting basic assumptions
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Improving the study of brain-behavior relationships by revisiting basic assumptions

Christiana Westlin, Jordan E. Theriault, Yuta Katsumi, Alfonso Nieto-Castanon, Aaron Kucyi, Sebastian F. Ruf, Sarah M. Brown, Misha Pavel, Deniz Erdogmus, Dana H. Brooks, …
Trends in cognitive sciences, v 27(3), 246
01 Mar 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.12.015
PMID: 36739181
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.12.015View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

brain-behavior relationships complexity degeneracy variation whole-brain modeling ESI Highly Cited Paper (Incites)
The study of brain-behavior relationships has been guided by several foundational assumptions that are called into question by empirical evidence from human brain imaging and neuroscience research on non-human animals.Neural ensembles distributed across the whole brain may give rise to mental events rather than localized neural populations. A variety of neural ensembles may contribute to one mental event rather than one-to-one mappings. Mental events may emerge as a complex ensemble of interdependent signals from the brain, body, and world rather than from neural ensembles that are context-independent.A more robust science of brain-behavior relationships awaits if research efforts are grounded in alternative assumptions that are supported by empirical evidence and which provide new opportunities for discovery. Neuroimaging research has been at the forefront of concerns regarding the failure of experimental findings to replicate. In the study of brain-behavior relationships, past failures to find replicable and robust effects have been attributed to methodological shortcomings. Methodological rigor is important, but there are other overlooked possibilities: most published studies share three foundational assumptions, often implicitly, that may be faulty. In this paper, we consider the empirical evidence from human brain imaging and the study of non-human animals that calls each foundational assumption into question. We then consider the opportunities for a robust science of brain-behavior relationships that await if scientists ground their research efforts in revised assumptions supported by current empirical evidence.

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97 citations in Web of Science
80 citations in Scopus

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Highly Cited Paper 
Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Behavioral Sciences
Neurosciences
Psychology, Experimental
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