How can we know the function of a region of the brain? Have we been approaching the problem in the wrong way? An interesting new paper from German neuroscientists Sarah Genon and colleagues explores these questions.
According to Genon et al., neuroscientists have generally approached the brain from the standpoint of behavior. We ask: what is the neural basis of this behavioral or psychological function?
Traditionally, assigning functions to brain regions has mainly been based on conceptualizations of functions from many different disciplines that are interested in the study of the mind and behavior… ‘speech production’, ‘perspective taking’, and ‘emotional regulation’ are a few examples of these behavioral functions.
This “behavior-first” approach has revealed many associations between particular functions and particular brain regions. However, Genon et al. say, it has become clear that any given behavioral function involves more than one brain region, and it may be that there is ...
