Not Every Thing Must Go

Abstract

In The Entangled Brain, Pessoa criticizes standard approaches in cognitive neuroscience in which the brain is seen as a functionally decomposable, modular system with causal operations built up hierarchically. Instead, he advocates for an emergentist perspective whereby dynamic brain networks are associated, not with traditional psychological categories, but with behavioral functions characterized in evolutionary terms. Here, we raise a number of concerns with such a radical approach. We ultimately believe that although much revision to cognitive neuroscience is welcome and needed, Pessoa's more radical proposals may be counterproductive.

Evolving Concepts of Functional Localization

“…For example, Anderson (2014) argues that since brain regions have "dispositional functions" and the brain flexibly recruits neural resources to perform tasks, neuroscience should move past localizationism as a guiding framework (see Section 6). Pessoa (2022) similarly claims that localization fails because the brain networks supporting cognitive functions are interactionally complex and are not functionally decomposable (see Boone et al, 2022 for a critical reply). Must cognitive neuroscience abandon localization to move forward?…”