Big Behavioral Data: Psychology, Ethology and the Foundations of Neuroscience

Overview

Journal Nat Neurosci

Date 2014 Oct 29

PMID 25349912

Citations 107

Authors

Alex Gomez-Marin

Joseph J Paton

Adam R Kampff

Rui M Costa

Zachary F Mainen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Behavior is a unifying organismal process where genes, neural function, anatomy and environment converge and interrelate. Here we review the current state and discuss the future effect of accelerating advances in technology for behavioral studies, focusing on rodents as an example. We frame our perspective in three dimensions: the degree of experimental constraint, dimensionality of data and level of description. We argue that 'big behavioral data' presents challenges proportionate to its promise and describe how these challenges might be met through opportunities afforded by the two rival conceptual legacies of twentieth century behavioral science, ethology and psychology. We conclude that, although 'more is not necessarily better', copious, quantitative and open behavioral data has the potential to transform and unify these two disciplines and to solidify the foundations of others, including neuroscience, but only if the development of new theoretical frameworks and improved experimental designs matches the technological progress.

Citing Articles

NEBULA101: an open dataset for the study of language aptitude in behaviour, brain structure and function.

Rampinini A, Balboni I, Kepinska O, Berthele R, Golestani N Sci Data. 2025; 12(1):19.

PMID: 39762267 PMC: 11704325. DOI: 10.1038/s41597-024-04357-y.

SARTAB, a scalable system for automated real-time behavior detection based on animal tracking and Region Of Interest analysis: validation on fish courtship behavior.

Lancaster T, Leatherbury K, Shilova K, Streelman J, McGrath P Front Behav Neurosci. 2024; 18:1509369.

PMID: 39703614 PMC: 11655190. DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1509369.

Behavioral Coding of Captive African Elephants (): Utilizing DeepLabCut and Create ML for Nocturnal Activity Tracking.

Lund S, Nielsen J, Gammelgard F, Nielsen M, Jensen T, Pertoldi C Animals (Basel). 2024; 14(19).

PMID: 39409769 PMC: 11482618. DOI: 10.3390/ani14192820.

Drawing as a versatile cognitive tool.

Fan J, Bainbridge W, Chamberlain R, Wammes J Nat Rev Psychol. 2024; 2(9):556-568.

PMID: 39239312 PMC: 11377027. DOI: 10.1038/s44159-023-00212-w.

A study of animal action segmentation algorithms across supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised learning paradigms.

Blau A, Schaffer E, Mishra N, Miska N, Paninski L, Whiteway M ArXiv. 2024; .

PMID: 39108294 PMC: 11302674.

References

Friston K, Daunizeau J, Kilner J, Kiebel S . Action and behavior: a free-energy formulation. Biol Cybern. 2010; 102(3):227-60. DOI: 10.1007/s00422-010-0364-z. View

Vogelstein J, Park Y, Ohyama T, Kerr R, Truman J, Priebe C . Discovery of brainwide neural-behavioral maps via multiscale unsupervised structure learning. Science. 2014; 344(6182):386-92. DOI: 10.1126/science.1250298. View

Schaefer A, Claridge-Chang A . The surveillance state of behavioral automation. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2011; 22(1):170-6. PMC: 3398388. DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2011.11.004. View

Brembs B . The importance of being active. J Neurogenet. 2008; 23(1-2):120-6. DOI: 10.1080/01677060802471643. View

Schall J . On building a bridge between brain and behavior. Annu Rev Psychol. 2004; 55:23-50. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141907. View

Benjamini Y, Lipkind D, Horev G, Fonio E, Kafkafi N, Golani I . Ten ways to improve the quality of descriptions of whole-animal movement. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2010; 34(8):1351-65. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.04.004. View

Carandini M, Churchland A . Probing perceptual decisions in rodents. Nat Neurosci. 2013; 16(7):824-31. PMC: 4105200. DOI: 10.1038/nn.3410. View

Kepecs A, Uchida N, Mainen Z . Rapid and precise control of sniffing during olfactory discrimination in rats. J Neurophysiol. 2007; 98(1):205-13. DOI: 10.1152/jn.00071.2007. View

Kwon Y, Kang K, Bae C, Chung H, Kim J . Lifelog agent for human activity pattern analysis on health avatar platform. Healthc Inform Res. 2014; 20(1):69-75. PMC: 3950268. DOI: 10.4258/hir.2014.20.1.69. View

10.

Stephens G, Johnson-Kerner B, Bialek W, Ryu W . Dimensionality and dynamics in the behavior of C. elegans. PLoS Comput Biol. 2008; 4(4):e1000028. PMC: 2276863. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000028. View

11.

Kawagoe R, Takikawa Y, Hikosaka O . Expectation of reward modulates cognitive signals in the basal ganglia. Nat Neurosci. 1999; 1(5):411-6. DOI: 10.1038/1625. View

12.

Dominici N, Ivanenko Y, Cappellini G, dAvella A, Mondi V, Cicchese M . Locomotor primitives in newborn babies and their development. Science. 2011; 334(6058):997-9. DOI: 10.1126/science.1210617. View

13.

Gold J, Shadlen M . Neural computations that underlie decisions about sensory stimuli. Trends Cogn Sci. 2001; 5(1):10-16. DOI: 10.1016/s1364-6613(00)01567-9. View

14.

Berman G, Choi D, Bialek W, Shaevitz J . Mapping the stereotyped behaviour of freely moving fruit flies. J R Soc Interface. 2014; 11(99). PMC: 4233753. DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2014.0672. View

15.

Tenenbaum J, De Silva V, Langford J . A global geometric framework for nonlinear dimensionality reduction. Science. 2000; 290(5500):2319-23. DOI: 10.1126/science.290.5500.2319. View

16.

Harvey C, Coen P, Tank D . Choice-specific sequences in parietal cortex during a virtual-navigation decision task. Nature. 2012; 484(7392):62-8. PMC: 3321074. DOI: 10.1038/nature10918. View

17.

Brown A, Yemini E, Grundy L, Jucikas T, Schafer W . A dictionary of behavioral motifs reveals clusters of genes affecting Caenorhabditis elegans locomotion. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012; 110(2):791-6. PMC: 3545781. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1211447110. View

18.

Branson K, Robie A, Bender J, Perona P, Dickinson M . High-throughput ethomics in large groups of Drosophila. Nat Methods. 2009; 6(6):451-7. PMC: 2734963. DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1328. View

19.

Busse L, Ayaz A, Dhruv N, Katzner S, Saleem A, Scholvinck M . The detection of visual contrast in the behaving mouse. J Neurosci. 2011; 31(31):11351-61. PMC: 6623377. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6689-10.2011. View

20.

LORENZ K . The evolution of behavior. Sci Am. 1958; 199(6):67-74 passim. DOI: 10.1038/scientificamerican1258-67. View