In the summer of 2021, I read Buszaki’s book, The brain from inside out . It gave me a lot to think about my own work in human neuro-ethology and how it relates to the broader neuroscientific enterprise. Inspired by further readings, I conducted a seminar geared towards advanced level MSc and BSc students, where we read recent papers that have stressed the importance of ecological validity and investigated natural behaviors in the pursuit of understanding the brain.
Here’s what we read:
Buzsáki, G. (2020). The Brain-Cognitive Behavior Problem: A Retrospective. eNeuro, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0069-20.2020
Buzsáki, G., Peyrache, A., & Kubie, J. (2014). Emergence of Cognition from Action. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, 79, 41–50. https://doi.org/10.1101/sqb.2014.79.024679
Engel, A. K., Maye, A., Kurthen, M., & König, P. (2013). Where’s the action? The pragmatic turn in cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(5), 202–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.03.006
Krakauer, J. W., Ghazanfar, A. A., Gomez-Marin, A., MacIver, M. A., & Poeppel, D. (2017). Neuroscience Needs Behavior: Correcting a Reductionist Bias. Neuron, 93(3), 480–490. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2016.12.041
Datta, S. R., Anderson, D. J., Branson, K., Perona, P., & Leifer, A. (2019). Computational neuroethology: A call to action. Neuron, 104(1), 11–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.09.038
Makeig, S., Gramann, K., Jung, T.-P., Sejnowski, T. J., & Poizner, H. (2009). Linking brain, mind and behavior. International Journal of Psychophysiology: Official Journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology, 73(2), 95–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2008.11.008
Mobbs, D., Wise, T., Suthana, N., Guzmán, N., Kriegeskorte, N., & Leibo, J. Z. (2021). Promises and challenges of human computational ethology. Neuron, 109(14), 2224–2238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2021.05.021
Holleman, G. A., Hooge, I. T. C., Kemner, C., & Hessels, R. S. (2021). The Reality of “Real-Life” Neuroscience: A Commentary on Shamay-Tsoory and Mendelsohn (2019) [Review of The Reality of “Real-Life” Neuroscience: A Commentary on Shamay-Tsoory and Mendelsohn (2019)]. Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 16(2), 461–465. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620917354
Matusz, P. J., Dikker, S., Huth, A. G., & Perrodin, C. (2019). Are We Ready for Real-world Neuroscience? Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 31(3), 327–338. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_e_01276
Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., & Mendelsohn, A. (2019). Real-Life Neuroscience: An Ecological Approach to Brain and Behavior Research. Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 14(5), 841–859. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619856350
Cisek, P. (1999). Beyond the computer metaphor: behaviour as interaction. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6(11-12), 125–142.
Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. Hilldale, USA, 1(2), 67–82.
Grafton, S. T., & Hamilton, A. F. de C. (2007). Evidence for a distributed hierarchy of action representation in the brain. Human Movement Science, 26(4), 590–616. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2007.05.009
Ahissar, E., & Assa, E. (2016). Perception as a closed-loop convergence process. eLife, 5. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12830
Butz, M. V. (2016). Toward a Unified Sub-symbolic Computational Theory of Cognition. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 925. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00925
Yang, S. C.-H., Lengyel, M., & Wolpert, D. M. (2016). Active sensing in the categorization of visual patterns. eLife, 5. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.12215
Carney, J. (2020). Thinking avant la lettre: A Review of 4E Cognition. Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 4(1), 77–90. https://doi.org/10.26613/esic/4.1.172
Parada, F. J., & Rossi, A. (2020). Perfect timing: Mobile brain/body imaging scaffolds the 4E-cognition research program. The European Journal of Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.14783
Pezzulo, G., & Cisek, P. (2016). Navigating the Affordance Landscape: Feedback Control as a Process Model of Behavior and Cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(6), 414–424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.03.013
Hénaff, O. J., Bai, Y., Charlton, J. A., Nauhaus, I., Simoncelli, E. P., & Goris, R. L. T. (2021). Primary visual cortex straightens natural video trajectories. Nature Communications, 12(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25939-z
Henderson, J. M. (2017). Gaze Control as Prediction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(1), 15–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.11.003
Sonkusare, S., Breakspear, M., & Guo, C. (2019). Naturalistic Stimuli in Neuroscience: Critically Acclaimed. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(8), 699–714. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.05.004
Faisal, A. A., Selen, L. P. J., & Wolpert, D. M. (2008). Noise in the nervous system. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 9(4), 292–303. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2258
Haar, S., Sundar, G., & Faisal, A. A. (2021). Embodied virtual reality for the study of real-world motor learning. PloS One, 16(1), e0245717. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245717
Herbort, O., & Butz, M. V. (2011). Habitual and goal-directed factors in (everyday) object handling. Experimental Brain Research, 213(4), 371–382. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2787-8
Belardinelli, A., Stepper, M. Y., & Butz, M. V. (2016). It’s in the eyes: Planning precise manual actions before execution. Journal of Vision, 16(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.1167/16.1.18
Fabbri, S., Stubbs, K. M., Cusack, R., & Culham, J. C. (2016). Disentangling Representations of Object and Grasp Properties in the Human Brain. The Journal of Neuroscience. 36(29), 7648–7662. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0313-16.2016
Macuga, K. L., & Frey, S. H. (2012). Neural representations involved in observed, imagined, and imitated actions are dissociable and hierarchically organized. NeuroImage, 59(3), 2798–2807. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.09.083
Flanagan, J. R., & Johansson, R. S. (2003). Action plans used in action observation. Nature, 424(6950), 769–771. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01861
Hamilton, A. F. de C. (2021). Hyperscanning: Beyond the Hype. Neuron, 109(3), 404–407. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2020.11.008
Pan, X., & Hamilton, A. F. de C. (2018). Why and how to use virtual reality to study human social interaction: The challenges of exploring a new research landscape. British Journal of Psychology , 109(3), 395–417. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12290
Çukur, T., Nishimoto, S., Huth, A. G., & Gallant, J. L. (2013). Attention during natural vision warps semantic representation across the human brain. Nature Neuroscience, 16(6), 763–770. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3381
Graziano, M. S. A. (2016). Ethological Action Maps: A Paradigm Shift for the Motor Cortex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(2), 121–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.10.008
Haxby, J. V., Gobbini, M. I., & Nastase, S. A. (2020). Naturalistic stimuli reveal a dominant role for agentic action in visual representation. NeuroImage, 216, 116561. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116561
Orban, G. A., Lanzilotto, M., & Bonini, L. (2021). From Observed Action Identity to Social Affordances. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(6), 493–505. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.012
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