Unraveling Human Actions through Psychological Neuroscience
Understanding how electrical brain activity produces seemingly simple actions, and the cognitive control of it is what Dr. Christian Beste is interested in. He devotes his research to the neurophysiology of action control since this will also provide answers to one of the biggest questions ever since: What makes us human and what shapes an individual’s identity? The Nobel Prize winner Eric Kandel once coined that „We are who we are, because of what we have learned and what we remember.“ While this is certainly true, it is only half the story. Facts that we will learn or have learned are nothing else as the result of some action an agent has performed in the past or will perform in the future. Actions, however simple, their control and the effects thereof create a rich, memorable idiosyncratic experience, that continuously shapes who we are, how we behave and create the future. This is why questions on how humans act is of general importance.
Within this approach it is important to investigate the electrophysiology of action control holistically. A shortcoming of nowadays attempts to better understand action is its artificial demarcation in “building blocks” such as conflict monitoring, response selection, response inhibition, error processing or cognitive flexibility. To overcome this, Dr. Christian Beste employs what he calls “Psychological Neuroscience” and which creates opportunities for knowledge transfer and re-defines what we think is normal behavior in terms of neurodiversity.
One of the major strengths of psychology is its logically stringent experimental approach combined with a high level to theorizing. Most “cognitive neuroscience” approaches often fall short of their ambition to connect physiology and psychology. This is because many influential psychological theories do not directly address the level of neural correlates and processes. This makes it difficult for neuroscientists to connect to these theories. It is the conceptual stringency of psychological theories that is often lacking in neuroscience.
There is an „interface problem“ between psychological science and neuroscience, leaving the fields disconnected even though they try to address the same questions. While fields can make progress without each other, holistic understandings of brain function are still impossible. The disconnect between psychology and neuroscience impedes both scientific progress and has substantial repercussions in terms of replicability in brain sciences. There are often different „grain sizes“, or levels, in the consideration of mental processes in psychology and neuroscience. Psychological theories vary in their specificity and breadth of neural processes upon which these theories can be applied. In the case of neuroscience, a variety of methods address different levels of inspection – from the single cell to circuitry to systems. In addition, the methods will vary with respect to temporal and spatial resolution. At present, the difficulties faced when connecting neuroscience research and psychological theories increase when neuroscience research focuses on increasingly smaller building blocks in neuronal mechanisms (e.g., microcircuits, multi-unit, or single-cell levels).
Dr. Christian Beste overcomes this fundamental problem in basic and clinical directions for research in human populations as seen in neurology and psychiatry. It is the integrated mutual development of Psychology and Neuroscience with a strong theoretical basis that is of importance. He does so by using well-framed and validated psychological frameworks and connect these with electrophysiological principles of human brain function. Importantly, it is psychology which informs the neuroscience approach – and not the other way around! Psychological Neuroscience combines the best of two worlds (Psychology and Neuroscience) and provides innovation to research through providing grounds to think into unconventional directions one may not dare to think of: Are there hidden potentials in disorders? Psychological Neuroscience provides novel grounds for research on neurodiversity and is able to get to a truly mechanistic conceptualization of neuropsychiatric disorders. Through this it creates occasions for people, from diverse backgrounds.