Engineering the Next Revolution in Neuroscience : The New Science of Experiment Planning

Science is growing at a pace that exceeds our comprehension. This is no less true of neuroscience than any other discipline. Ambiguity about what is known and what has been disproven confounds researchers and hampers research planning. There are simply too many research articles and too few hours in the day for anyone to read all that is relevant, let alone distinguish the reliable results from the sketchy ones.

Engineering the Next Revolution in Neuroscience explores the proposal that we can overcome these obstacles to scientific progress, and revolutionize neuroscience, by using a framework to map the experimental record. With case studies from learning and memory research, the authors show that we can construct networks of experimental research that make the state of our knowledge manifest. Armed with maps of experiments, scientists can determine more efficiently what their fields have accomplished and where the unexplored territories still reside.

AJS: Professor, Departments of Neurobiology, Psychiatry, and Psychology, Head, Integrative Center for Learning and Memory, Brain Research Institute, UCLA
JB: Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, and Fellow, Institute for Imaging and Analytical Technologies, Mississippi State University
AL: Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Psychology, UCLA