Postdoctoral Fellowship: The Changing Interface between Data, Theories and Communities in Neuroimaging Research

博士后奖学金：神经影像研究中数据、理论和社区之间不断变化的界面

• 批准号: 1655839
• 负责人: Jessey Wright
• 金额: $ 18.84万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-04-01 至 2019-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1655839&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Postdoctoral; Fellowship; Changing; Interface; between

General Audience Summary This Postdoctoral Fellowship supports a research project focused on philosophical questions associated with neuroimaging technologies. The specific questions to be addressed include the following. How are new technologies for sharing, organizing, and analyzing data and theories changing the norms of evidence in neuroimaging research? How are these technologies bringing research communities, theories, data, and analysis techniques together in novel ways? What role do different data analysis techniques play in using data as evidence for claims about phenomena it was not produced to investigate? How does the use of new technologies change the way cognitive scientists interpret their data? The postdoctoral fellow will engage in participatory experience in the practice of neuroscience to obtain valuable insight into the use and structure of these technologies, which will then be used to address these philosophical questions. More specifically, the fellow will be situated in a neuroscience lab that uses and develops tools such as the Cognitive Atlas, a community driven-knowledge base, and OpenfMRI, a database of minimally processed neuroimaging data. The postdoc will contribute to ongoing research using these tools. He will gain participatory experience regarding their use and development, and while doing so engage in philosophical analysis to addresses his questions. The analysis will in turn serve to enhance the use and development of these technologies, as well as the practice of neuroscience. By situating the fellow, a philosopher of science, within the active community of cognitive neuroscientists, the project will provide members of that community with cross-disciplinary expertise. More broadly, the project will demonstrate the value of engaged philosophy of neuroscience for both advancing the practice of neuroscience, and improving the richness and quality of philosophical analyses that take neuroscience to be its subject.Technical Summary The proposed research project is focused on addressing philosophical issues in the epistemology of science, by approaching them from the perspective of the practices that give rise these issues. Over the last decade, neuroimaging research has involved new technologies and tools for sharing, organizing, and analyzing data and theories. This has gone hand in hand with two movements in cognitive neuroscience. The first is the growing pressure to make research practices reproducible and transparent, with the aim of improving the standards of evidence and quality of research. The second is the realization that newly developed analysis techniques that could be used to investigate hypotheses and theories previously beyond the scope of available evidence require large collections of organized and annotated data to produce meaningful results. The proposed project involves simultaneously engaging in the practice of using these technologies and studying how they are changing the evidential and theoretical landscape of cognitive neuroscience. The research fellow will use philosophical concepts to evaluate the strength of scientific inferences and to identify assumptions implicit in aspects of the technology. For example, he will explore the relations between concepts allowed by the Cognitive Atlas or its use, such as the decisions that are made during the analysis of data. This application of philosophical frameworks will also provide feedback on their descriptive and normative adequacy. In this way, this project will contribute to philosophical discussions about the epistemology of data-intensive science and neuroscience, and bring insight from those contributions to bear on the use and development of technologies (such as the Cognitive Atlas).

一般受众摘要 该博士后奖学金支持一个专注于与神经影像技术相关的哲学问题的研究项目。需要解决的具体问题包括以下内容。共享、组织和分析数据和理论的新技术如何改变神经影像研究的证据规范？这些技术如何以新颖的方式将研究社区、理论、数据和分析技术结合在一起？不同的数据分析技术在使用数据作为证据来证明其并非为了调查而产生的现象方面发挥什么作用？新技术的使用如何改变认知科学家解释数据的方式？博士后研究员将参与神经科学实践的参与式经验，以获得对这些技术的使用和结构的宝贵见解，然后将其用于解决这些哲学问题。更具体地说，该研究员将在一个神经科学实验室工作，该实验室使用和开发 Cognitive Atlas（社区驱动的知识库）和 OpenfMRI（经过最低限度处理的神经影像数据数据库）等工具。博士后将利用这些工具为正在进行的研究做出贡献。他将获得有关其使用和开发的参与经验，并在此过程中进行哲学分析来解决他的问题。该分析反过来将有助于加强这些技术的使用和开发以及神经科学的实践。通过将科学哲学家研究员置于活跃的认知神经科学家社区中，该项目将为该社区的成员提供跨学科的专业知识。更广泛地说，该项目将展示参与神经科学哲学对于推进神经科学实践以及提高以神经科学为主题的哲学分析的丰富性和质量的价值。 技术摘要 拟议的研究项目侧重于解决哲学问题科学认识论中的问题，通过从引起这些问题的实践的角度来处理它们。在过去的十年中，神经影像研究涉及用于共享、组织和分析数据和理论的新技术和工具。这与认知神经科学的两项运动齐头并进。首先是使研究实践可重复和透明的压力越来越大，目的是提高证据标准和研究质量。第二个是认识到，新开发的分析技术可用于调查先前超出现有证据范围的假设和理论，需要大量有组织和注释的数据收集才能产生有意义的结果。拟议的项目涉及同时参与使用这些技术的实践，并研究它们如何改变认知神经科学的证据和理论景观。研究员将使用哲学概念来评估科学推论的强度，并识别技术方面隐含的假设。例如，他将探索认知图谱或其使用所允许的概念之间的关系，例如在数据分析过程中做出的决策。哲学框架的这种应用还将提供有关其描述性和规范性充分性的反馈。通过这种方式，该项目将有助于有关数据密集型科学和神经科学认识论的哲学讨论，并将这些贡献的见解应用于技术（例如认知图谱）的使用和开发。