Evidence map›Paper›PMID 26833316›Full record

ReviewPsychonomic bulletin & review2016

Is neuroimaging measuring information in the brain?

Lee de-Wit, David Alexander, Vebjørn Ekroll, Johan Wagemans

Open access · hybridAbstract readReview
In one paragraph

Review in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
43citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
14.3field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

43 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 155 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. The Time-Course of Food Representation in the Human Brain.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024
    Article
  7. The impact of functional correlations on task information coding.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024
    Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Review
  11. Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Music toIBRO neuroscience reports · 2022
    Article
  15. Article
  16. The Hippocampus May Support Context Retrieval in One-Shot Learning about Pain.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022
    Article
  17. Illusory Essences: A Bias Holding Back Theorizing in Psychological Science.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2022
    Article
  18. Article
  19. Prior Expectations of Motion Direction Modulate Early Sensory Processing.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2020
    Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Lee de-WitInstitute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. lee.de-wit@ice.cam.ac.uk.
David AlexanderLaboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Vebjørn EkrollLaboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Johan WagemansLaboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
KU Leuven · BEUniversity of Cambridge · GB

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Psychology moved beyond the stimulus response mapping of behaviorism by adopting an information processing framework. This shift from behavioral to cognitive science was partly inspired by work demonstrating that the concept of information could be defined and quantified (Shannon, 1948). This transition developed further from cognitive science into cognitive neuroscience, in an attempt to measure information in the brain. In the cognitive neurosciences, however, the term information is often used without a clear definition. This paper will argue that, if the formulation proposed by Shannon is applied to modern neuroimaging, then numerous results would be interpreted differently. More specifically, we argue that much modern cognitive neuroscience implicitly focuses on the question of how we can interpret the activations we record in the brain (experimenter-as-receiver), rather than on the core question of how the rest of the brain can interpret those activations (cortex-as-receiver). A clearer focus on whether activations recorded via neuroimaging can actually act as information in the brain would not only change how findings are interpreted but should also change the direction of empirical research in cognitive neuroscience.

Indexed as

BrainCognitive NeuroscienceHumansNeuroimagingCognitive neuroscienceNeuroimaging

Identifiers

PMID26833316
PMCPMC5050241
OpenAlexW2261165719

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

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.