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Data exploration has enormous potential to modify and create hypotheses, models, and theories. Harnessing the potential of transparent exploration replaces the common, flawed purpose of intransparent exploration: to produce results that appear to confirm a claim by hiding steps of an analysis. For transparent exploration to succeed, however, methodological guidance, elaboration and implementation in the publication system is required. We present some basic conceptions to stimulate further development. In this first of two parts, we describe the current blending of confirmatory and exploratory research and propose how to separate the two via severe testing. A claim is confirmed if it passes a test that probably would have failed if the claim was false. Such a severe test makes a risky prediction. It adheres to an evidential norm with a threshold, usually p < α = .05, but other norms are possible, for example, with Bayesian approaches. To this end, adherence requires control against questionable research practices like p-hacking and HARKing. At present, preregistration seems to be the most feasible mode of control. Analyses that do not adhere to a norm or where this cannot be controlled should be considered as exploratory. We propose that exploration serves to modify or create new claims that are likely to pass severe testing with new data. Confirmation and exploration, if sound and transparent, benefit from one another. The second part will provide suggestions for planning and conducting exploration and for implementing more transparent exploratory research.

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Fingertip mechanoreceptors comprise sensory neuron endings together with specialized skin cells that form the end-organ. Exquisitely sensitive vibration-sensing neurons are associated with Meissner’s corpuscles and Pacinian corpuscles1. Such end-organ structures have been recognized for more than 160 years, but their exact functions have remained a matter of speculation. Here we examined the role of USH2A in touch sensation in humans and mice. The USH2A gene encodes a transmembrane protein with a very large extracellular domain. Pathogenic USH2A mutations cause Usher syndrome associated with hearing loss and visual impairment2. We show that patients with biallelic pathogenic USH2A mutations also have profound impairments in vibrotactile touch perception. Similarly, mice lacking the USH2A protein showed severe deficits in a forepaw vibrotactile discrimination task. Forepaw rapidly-adapting mechanoreceptors (RAMs) recorded from Ush2a−/− mice innervating Meissner’s corpuscles showed profound reductions in their vibration sensitivity. However, the USH2A protein was not expressed in sensory neurons, but was found in specialized terminal Schwann cells in Meissner’s corpuscles. Loss of this large extracellular tether-like protein in corpuscular end-organs innervated by RAMs was sufficient to reduce the vibration sensitivity of mechanoreceptors. Thus, USH2A expressed in corpuscular end-organs associated with vibration sensing is required to properly perceive vibration. We propose that cells within the corpuscle present a tether-like protein that may link to mechanosensitive channels in sensory endings to facilitate small amplitude vibration detection essential for the perception of fine textured surfaces.

Envy is the painful or resentful awareness of another's advantage combined with a desire to possess that same advantage. Recent neuroscientific research has begun to shed light on the brain regions that process the experience of envy, including regions of the prefrontal cortex involved in emotional processing and social cognition. It is still unclear, however, which regions of the brain are functionally connected during the experience of envy. We recorded functional neuroimaging data while inducing simulated envy in participants, experienced through a perspective-taking hypothetical scenario task. In this task, participants took the perspective of a protagonist portrayed in a written description and compared themselves to either i) a self-similar/superior individual, ii) a self-dissimilar/superior individual, or iii) a self-dissimilar/average individual. During each comparison, participants also reported how much envy they experienced while taking the protagonists perspective. We demonstrate an inverse relationship in the connectivity of the left superior frontal gyrus to both the right supramarginal gyrus and the precuneus with respect to selfreported envy ratings across participants. In other words, we show that the greater the functional connectivity that the left superior frontal gyrus shares with the right supramarginal gyrus and precuneus, the less reported envy a participant experiences. Overall, our results are in line with previous research implicating the superior frontal gyrus in the reappraisal of negative emotions and extend these findings by showing this region is also involved in modulating the simulated experience of the social comparative, negative emotion of envy.