Ozkirli Ayberk, Herzog Michael H, Jastrzębowska Maya A
Laboratory of Psychophysics, Brain Mind Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland.
Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Eur J Neurosci. 2025 Jan;61(1):e16636. doi: 10.1111/ejn.16636.
Within the reductionist framework, researchers in the special sciences formulate key terms and concepts and try to explain them with lower-level science terms and concepts. For example, behavioural vision scientists describe contrast perception with a psychometric function, in which the perceived brightness increases logarithmically with the physical contrast of a light patch (the Weber-Fechner law). Visual neuroscientists describe the output of neural circuits with neurometric functions. Intuitively, the key terms from two adjacent scientific domains should map onto each other; for instance, psychometric and neurometric functions may map onto each other. Identifying such mappings has been the very goal of neuroscience for nearly two centuries. Yet mapping behaviour to brain measures has turned out to be difficult. Here, we provide various arguments as to why the conspicuous lack of robust brain-behaviour mappings is rather a rule than an exception. First, we provide an overview of methodological and conceptual issues that may stand in the way of successful brain-behaviour mapping. Second, extending previous theoretical work (Herzog, Doerig and Sachse, 2023), we show that brain-behaviour mapping may be limited by complexity barriers. In this case, reduction may be impossible.
在还原论框架内，特殊科学领域的研究人员制定关键术语和概念，并尝试用较低层次的科学术语和概念来解释它们。例如，行为视觉科学家用心理测量函数来描述对比度感知，其中感知到的亮度随光斑的物理对比度呈对数增加（韦伯-费希纳定律）。视觉神经科学家用神经测量函数来描述神经回路的输出。直观地说，两个相邻科学领域的关键术语应该相互对应；例如，心理测量函数和神经测量函数可能相互对应。近两个世纪以来，确定这种对应关系一直是神经科学的目标。然而，事实证明，将行为与大脑测量结果对应起来是困难的。在这里，我们给出各种论据，说明为何明显缺乏可靠的大脑-行为对应关系是一种常态而非例外。首先，我们概述了可能阻碍成功进行大脑-行为映射的方法学和概念性问题。其次，扩展先前的理论工作（赫尔佐格、多里格和萨克塞，2023年），我们表明大脑-行为映射可能受到复杂性障碍的限制。在这种情况下，还原可能是不可能的。
