ReviewNature neuroscience2014
Big behavioral data: psychology, ethology and the foundations of neuroscience.
Review in Nature neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 139 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
139 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Under or Absent Reporting of Light Stimuli in Testing of Anxiety-Like Behaviors in Rodents: The Need for Standardization.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2022Pooled it
- A wireless modular platform for neuro-behavioral recording and closed-loop manipulation in small animals.Nature methods · 2026Article
- Decoding the Oxytocinergic and Behavioral Signatures of Milk Ejection.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Semi-automated detection of cleaning interactions using supervised machine learning.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- ManuTrace: An HTML-Based Interface for Manually Extracting Movement Trajectory Data From a Video.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Recognising dog movement with behaviour-specific machine learning models: bout length as a biologically relevant parameter for window size.BMC veterinary research · 2026Article
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- Glutamatergic projections from the substantia nigra pars reticulata to the dorsal raphe nucleus regulate male social hierarchies.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Methods for Evaluating Neurotropic Viral Infections: Exploring Zika and Coronavirus Diseases.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2026Article
- The role of signal in saltatory pursuit of cryptic stationary targets.Movement ecology · 2025Article
- DANCE provides an open-source and low-cost approach to quantify aggression and courtship ineLife · 2025Article
- Identifying the factors governing internal state switches during nonstationary sensory decision-making.Nature communications · 2025Article
- FERAL: A Video-Understanding System for Direct Video-to-Behavior Mapping.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
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- Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience.Trends in neurosciences · 2025Review
- DISSeCT: An unsupervised framework for high-resolution mapping of rodent behavior using inertial sensors.PLoS biology · 2025Article
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- Hidden in plain sound: the scientific potential of house mouse squeaks.Biology letters · 2025Review
- Multimodal dataset linking wide-field calcium imaging to behavior changes in operant lever-pull task in mice.Scientific data · 2025Article
79 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Behavior is a unifying organismal process where genes, neural function, anatomy and environment converge and interrelate. Here we review the current state and discuss the future effect of accelerating advances in technology for behavioral studies, focusing on rodents as an example. We frame our perspective in three dimensions: the degree of experimental constraint, dimensionality of data and level of description. We argue that 'big behavioral data' presents challenges proportionate to its promise and describe how these challenges might be met through opportunities afforded by the two rival conceptual legacies of twentieth century behavioral science, ethology and psychology. We conclude that, although 'more is not necessarily better', copious, quantitative and open behavioral data has the potential to transform and unify these two disciplines and to solidify the foundations of others, including neuroscience, but only if the development of new theoretical frameworks and improved experimental designs matches the technological progress.
Indexed as
Identifiers
25349912What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.