Conceptual and methodological issues in comparative neuroscience and psychology: a reassessment
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Animal Behavior, Evolutionary Studies, Neuroscience
- Keywords
- allometry, brain evolution, comparative approach, mosaic evolution, scaling rule, mentality, concerted evolution, neuroecology, encephalization, taxon cerebrotype
- Copyright
- © 2015 Willemet
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Conceptual and methodological issues in comparative neuroscience and psychology: a reassessment. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1205v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1205v1
Abstract
By analysing species differences in brain and behaviour, comparative neuroscience & psychology can help to understand the nature and mechanisms of behaviour. The task is enormously complex due to the number of dimensions onto which species can differ. In addition, it is shown here that the approaches, methods and concepts used in these fields contain numerous issues. Many of these issues result from the persistence of misconceptions on the evolution of brain and behaviour; despite increasing evidence that more complex approaches and concepts should be considered. Most of the issues discussed here have been presented in a previous publication (Willemet, 2013, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00396) but have not been addressed by recent literature. They are restated here in detail, using as a reference a recent paper resulting from the cooperative work of many researchers in the field (Maclean et al. 2014, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1323533111). The factors responsible for the evolution of brain structure size are reviewed, with particular emphasis on the adjustment effect recently introduced (Willemet, 2015, doi: 10.3389/fnana.2015.00084:). The traditional interpretation of the concept of allometry is critically evaluated, and an alternative is discussed. It is also argued that the lack of consideration towards emotional, motivational and attentional factors constitutes a major obstacle to understanding the evolution of behaviour. A dataset on the neuroecology of repertoire size in songbirds is analyzed using the framework discussed here. It is concluded that until the issues detailed here are addressed, progress in our understanding of the evolution of brain and behaviour will be undermined.
Author Comment
This paper is published as a preprint because most of the original ideas on which it is based have already been published in peer-reviewed journals (Willemet 2012, 2013, 2015), and because the original project of (re)discussing some of the most significant issues affecting the fields of comparative neuroscience and psychology resulted in a paper whose length and format are incompatible with the relevant peer-reviewed journals.