Vergleich von Methoden zur Beschreibung funktioneller Spezialisierung des Gehirns
Kognitive, systemische und Verhaltensneurobiologie
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
The objective of our project was to better understand behavioral functions, such memory, attention, cognitive control, emotions,…associated with different brain regions. One line of research in this project was to identify associations between grey matter in some brain regions and performance across a range of psychological tests measuring different aspects of human behavior such as personality traits, memory performance, intelligence etc…. This idea was based on a vast amount of previous studies showing that certain type of behavior, cognitive performance or intelligence are related to grey matter volume in some parts of the brain. The previous studies hence suggested that differences between people in aspect of behavior such as extraversion, political orientation, social abilities, memory skills or intelligence could be related to differences between people in grey matter volume in some parts of the brain. The results of these studies have usually conveyed the idea that “we are different because our brains are structurally different”. However, when we started searching for associations between grey matter volume measured with an MRI scanner and measures of behavior (such as personality or IQ) in large samples of healthy people, we found only a few associations that could be considered as statistically significant. When we then tried to replicate the associations found in one sample of healthy people (for example between perceptual IQ and grey matter volume in some brain regions) in another similar sample of healthy people, the replication attempts mostly failed. By using different estimates of grey matter, many different behavioral measures and different samples of participants, we confirmed that there is a general issue of replication for reports of associations between grey matter in some parts of the brain and behavior. Thus, overall, these unexpected findings suggest that the results of previous studies should be seriously questioned and more generally that the common idea of “we are different because our brains are structurally different” seriously lacks reliable scientific evidence.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
- (2017). Searching for behavior relating to grey matter volume in apriori defined right dorsal premotor regions: lessons learned. NeuroImage, 157, 144-156
Genon, S., Wensing, T., Reid, A., Hoffstaedter, F., Caspers, S., Grefkes, C., Nickl-Jockschat, T., & Eickhoff, S. B.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.05.053) - (2018). Disrupted self in Alzheimer's disease: Beyond midline structures: Commentary on Wong et al. Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior, 104, 128-129
Genon, S., & Salmon, E.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.04.006) - (2018). Evaluation of non-negative matrix factorization of grey matter in age prediction. NeuroImage, 173, 394-410
Varikuti, D., Genon, S., Sotiras, A., Schwender, H., Hoffstaedter, F., Patil, K., Jockwitz, C., Caspers, S., Moebus, S., Amunts, K., Davatzikos, C., & Eickhoff, S.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.03.007) - (2018). How to Characterize the Function of a Brain Region. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(04), 350-364
Genon, S., Reid, A., Langner, R., Amunts, K., & Eickhoff, S.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.01.010) - (2018). Imaging-based parcellations of the human brain. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 19, 672–686
Eickhoff, S., Yeo, T., & Genon, S.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-018-0071-7) - (2019). Anosognosia and default mode subnetwork dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease. Human Brain Mapping, 40(18), 5330-5340
Antoine, N., Bahri, M. A., Bastin, C., Collette, F., Phillips, C., Balteau, E., Genon, S., & Salmon, E.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24775) - (2019). Empirical examination of the replicability of associations between brain structure and psychological variables. eLife, 13(8)
Kharabian Masouleh, S., Eickhoff, S., Hoffstaedter, F., & Genon, S.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43464) - (2019). Gender bias in (neuro)science: facts, consequences and solutions. European Journal of Neuroscience, 50(7), 3094-3100
Schrouff, J., Pischedda, Genon, S., Fryns, G., Pinho, A. L., Vassena, E., Liuzzi, A., & Ferreira, F.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.14397) - (2019). Multimodal parcellations and extensive behavioral profiling tackling the hippocampus gradient. Cerebral Cortex, 29(11), 4595-4612
Plachti, A., Eickhoff, S., Hoffstaedter, F., Patil, K., Laird, A., Fox, P., Amunts, K., & Genon, S.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhy336)
