Scientists look beyond the individual brain to study the collective mind


Date:
October 21, 2021
Source:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
Summary:
Scientists argue that efforts to understand human cognition
should expand beyond the study of individual brains. They call
on neuroscientists to incorporate evidence from social science
disciplines to better understand how people think.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
In a new paper, scientists suggest that efforts to understand human
cognition should expand beyond the study of individual brains. They
call on neuroscientists to incorporate evidence from social science
disciplines to better understand how people think.


========================================================================== "Accumulating evidence indicates that memory, reasoning, decision-making
and other higher-level functions take place across people," the
researchers wrote in a review in the journal Frontiers in Systems
Neuroscience. "Cognition extends into the physical world and the brains
of others." The co-authors -- neuroscientist Aron Barbey, a professor
of psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Richard Patterson, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Emory University; and
Steven Sloman, a professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological
sciences at Brown University -- wanted to address the limitations of
studying brains in isolation, out of the context in which they operate
and stripped of the resources they rely on for optimal function.

"In cognitive neuroscience, the standard approach is essentially to
assume that knowledge is represented in the individual brain and
transferred between individuals," Barbey said. "But there are, we
think, important cases where those assumptions begin to break down."
Take, for instance, the fact that people often "outsource" the task of understanding or coming to conclusions about complex subject matter,
using other people's expertise to guide their own decision-making.

"Most people will agree that smoking contributes to the incidence of
lung cancer -- without necessarily understanding precisely how that
occurs," Barbey said. "And when doctors diagnose and treat disease,
they don't transfer all of their knowledge to their patients. Instead,
patients rely on doctors to help them decide the best course of action.



========================================================================== "Without relying on experts in our community, our beliefs would become untethered from the social conventions and scientific evidence that
are necessary to support them," he said. "It would become unclear, for
example, whether 'smoking causes lung cancer,' bringing into question the
truth of our beliefs, the motivation for our actions." To understand
the role that knowledge serves in human intelligence, the researchers
wrote that it is necessary to look beyond the individual and to study
the community.

"Cognition is, to a large extent, a group activity, not an individual
one," Sloman said. "People depend on others for their reasoning,
judgment and decision-making. Cognitive neuroscience is not able to
shed light on this aspect of cognitive processing." The limitations of individual knowledge and human dependence on others for understanding
are the themes of "The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone," a
book Sloman wrote with Phil Fernbach, a cognitive scientist and professor
of marketing at the University of Colorado.

"The challenge for cognitive neuroscience becomes how to capture knowledge
that does not reside in the individual brain but is outsourced to the community," Barbey said.



========================================================================== Neuroscientific methods such as functional MRI were designed to track
activity in one brain at a time and have limited capacity for capturing
the dynamics that occur when individuals interact in large communities,
he said.

Some neuroscientists are trying to overcome this limitation. In a recent
study, researchers placed two people face-to-face in a scanner and tracked their brain activity and eye movements while they interacted. Other teams
use a technique called "hyperscanning," which allows the simultaneous
recording of brain activity in people who are physically distant from
each another but interacting online.

Such efforts have found evidence suggesting that the same brain regions
are activated in people who are effectively communicating with one
another or cooperating on a task, Barbey said. These studies are also
showing how brains operate differently from one another, depending on
the type of interaction and the context.

Several fields of research are ahead of neuroscience in understanding
and embracing the collective, collaborative nature of knowledge,
Patterson said.

For example, "social epistemology" recognizes that knowledge is a social phenomenon that depends on community norms, a shared language and a
reliable method for testing the trustworthiness of potential sources.

"Philosophers studying natural language also illustrate how knowledge
relies on the community," Patterson said. "For example, according to 'externalism,' the meaning of words depends on how they are used and represented within a social context. Thus, the meaning of the word and
its correct use depends on collective knowledge that extends beyond the individual." To address these shortfalls, neuroscientists can look to
other social science fields, Barbey said.

"We need to incorporate not only neuroscience evidence, but also evidence
from social psychology, social anthropology and other disciplines that
are better positioned to study the community of knowledge," he said.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana-Champaign,_News_Bureau.

Original written by Diana Yates. Note: Content may be edited for style
and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Steven A. Sloman, Richard Patterson, Aron K. Barbey. Cognitive
Neuroscience Meets the Community of Knowledge. Frontiers in Systems
Neuroscience, 2021; 15 DOI: 10.3389/fnsys.2021.675127 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/10/211021175116.htm

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