Bringing the lab to life and life to the lab

Imagine trying to understand the behaviour of a wild animal by observing it in a zoo – a controlled environment. While you might learn certain things about its behaviours, you would miss out on a lot of the complexities and randomness of its interactions in the wild. We spoke to Professor Gabriella Vigliocco a neuroscientist in the UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences who, along with students on the Ecological Doctoral Training Programme, recently published an article in the Royal Society Open Science investigating how the same could be said for understanding the human brain. They set out a framework for recording behaviour and neural activity in real world situations and discuss how advances in technology are allowing a growing number of researchers to study ‘real-world’ neuroscience.

In research, ecological validity refers to the degree to which the conditions that data are collected reflect the natural environment in which they actually occur. The ecological validity of a study affects how generalisable the results are to a wider population, beyond the study participants. Yet, within psychology and cognitive neuroscience, the traditional approach to studying behaviour tends to be quite removed from the ‘real world’. Professor Gabriella Vigliocco, lead author on the paper said:

“What you often see in cognitive neuroscience is a reductionist approach to experiments, where researchers attempt to control as many aspects of the experiment as possible to clearly identify and measure causal relationships. But this comes at the expense of actually investigating real human behaviour! Human behaviour is all about engaging and adapting to complex environments.”

“To truly understand human cognition, we must observe and analyse it in the environments where it naturally occurs. This involves both ‘bringing the lab to the real world’ and ‘bringing the real world to the lab’.”

Bringing the lab to the real world has been made possible with advancements in technology, such as wearable devices and mobile EEGs. These technologies mean that researchers can capture the brain’s activity as people go about their daily life, providing insight into cognitive functions in real-world settings. Technology has also made ‘taking the real world into the lab’ more possible with virtual and augmented reality. These technologies allow researchers to administer highly controlled real-world-like environments in a lab setting.

Building on the strengths of these two research concepts, the team call for a ‘Ecological Brain framework’ to guide the study of behaviour and neural activity. This framework integrates both real-world and laboratory research, where one informs the other in a cyclic process.

Figure from Ecological brain: reframingthe study of humanbehaviour and cognition showing an 'Ecobrain' framework in which real-world phenomena are identified and studied both in the real world (left) and in thelaboratory (right).

“In our article, we propose the Ecological Brain framework, in which exploratory real-world studies generate hypotheses, which are then tested in controlled lab settings. This approach combines the complexity of real-life environments with the precision of lab experiments, enhancing ecological validity.

“By leveraging new technologies and data analytics, it aims to create a continuous cycle of hypothesis generation and refinement for a comprehensive understanding of human behaviour.”

The team hope that this new framework will bridge the gap between the lab and the real world, allowing researchers to gain a more accurate and nuanced understanding of the human brain.

Related:

• Paper: Ecological brain: reframingthe study of humanbehaviour and cognition
• Ecological Doctoral Training Programme
• Professor Gabriella Vigliocco's academic profile
• UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences

Image credit: Vladimir Srajber on Pexels