An epidemic of " Necessary and Sufficient " neurons

A great deal of neuroscience has become“circuit cracking.”— Alex Gomez-MarinA miniaturized holy grail of neuroscience is discovering that activation or inhibition of a specific population of neurons (e.g.,prefrontal parvalbumin interneurons) or neural circuit (e.g.,basolateral amygdala→ nucleus accumbens) is “necessary and sufficient” (N&S) to produce a given behavior.from:Optogenetics, Sex, and Violence in the Brain: Implications for Psychiatry1 In the last year or so, it has become acceptable to question the dominant systems/circuit paradigm of “manipulate and measure” as THE method to gain insight into how the brain produces behavior (Krakauer et al., 2017;Gomez-Marin, 2017). Detailed analysis of an organism ' snatural behavior is indispensable for progress in understanding brain-behavior relationships. Claims that optogenetic and other manipulations of a neuronal population can demonstrate that it is “N&S ” for a complex behavior have also been challenged.Gomez-Marin (2017) pulled no punches and stated:I argue that to upgrade intervention to explanation is prone to logical fallacies, interpretational leaps and carries a weak explanatory force, thus settling and maintaining low standards for intelligibility in neuroscience. To claim that behavior is explained by a “necessary and sufficient” neural circuit is, at best, misleading.The latest entry into this fault-fest goes further, indicating that most N&S claims in biology violate th...

Source: The Neurocritic - July 13, 2018 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs