The Psychology of The Neuroscience Of

G Neil Martin
It seems as if you cant read any neuroimaging or neuropsychology study these days
without tripping over a neuroscience of. It has become the The psychology of de
nos jours (and, yes, I have checked and theres no Neuroscience de nos jours ;
theres no Neuroscience of pretension, either, thanks for asking.)
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first recorded use of
neuroscience was in 1963, although the source is not specified and the conclusion
may be based on Googles Ngram Viewer plot showing that the term became
common currency in the 60s, beginning in the early-sixties
We all know (yes, we do) that the first recorded use of the word brain was in the
earliest scientific document to have been unearthed, the Edwin Smith Surgical
Papyrus.
This ancient manuscript, named after the Egyptologist who discovered it in Luxor,
Egypt in 1862, dates from the seventeenth century bc, although it is probably a copy
of an ancient composite manuscript dating from around 30002500 bc. It describes
48 observations of brain and spinal injury and its treatment. It is an extraordinary
document in that it contains the first description of various parts of the brain,
including the cranial sutures, the meninges, the brains external surface and
cerebrospinal fluid (Wilkins, 1992).
But that is ancient history. What about now? A simple little search on Googles
Ngram for the term the neuroscience of produced this distribution:

A closer look at this graph shows that there begins a sharp upturn in the use of the
term (in books, remember) from 1993 to 2007/8, where Ngram cuts-off. The %
appearance rises from 0.0000001755% in 1993 to 0.0000014155% in 2008. Curious
to see whether there had been some exponential increase in the use of the term in
the literature, and to see whether there was more to this than a sneering dismissal
of an exaggerated trope, I used Google Scholar to search for the term the
neuroscience of limiting it to two fields- 2007-2007 and now, 2014-215. Google
Scholar covers books and journal articles. Citations were excluded and the searched
items included the term neuroscience of in the title of the paper or book.
These are the results. For 2007, these are all the appearances of the phrase the
neuroscience of returned by Google Scholar. There were no appearances after the
fourth page of results.

The neuroscience of consciousness (Lutz et al, 2007)

The neuroscience of remote memory (Squire & Bayley, 2007)

The neuroscience of remote spatial memory (Spiers & Maguire, 2007)

The neuroscience of joyful education (Willis, 2007)

The neuroscience of free will (Banks & Pockett, 2007)

The neuroscience of implicit processing heuristics in therapeutic hypnosis and

psychotherapy (Rossi & Rossi, 2007)

The neuroscience of leadership (Rock & Schwartz, 2007)

The neuroscience of learning (Collins, 2007)The neuroscience of cognition

and consciousness (Werner, 2007)

The neuroscience of dance (Dale et al, 2007)

Apart from joyful experience and dance, most of these uses are quite sober
short-hand references to some neurobiological underpinning of a common, quotidian
psychological variable (memory, consciousness etc).
Next, here are the results for the 2014-15 period.

The neuroscience of human relationships (Cozolino, 2014; Senland, 2014)

The neuroscience of prejudice and stereotyping (Amodio, 2014)

The neuroscience of mindfulness mediation (Tang et al, 2015)

The neuroscience of motivated cognition (Hughes & Zaki, 2015)

The neuroscience of creative genius (Andreasen & Ramachandran, 2014)

The neuroscience of psychological treatments (Barlow, 2014)

The neuroscience of risky decision-making (Reyna & Zayas, 2014)

The neuroscience of empathy (Schott, 2015)

The neuroscience of musical improvisation (Beatty, 2015)

The neuroscience of inspirational leadership (Molenberghs et al, 2015)

The neuroscience of dual (and triple) systems on decision-making (Wood &

Bechera, 2014)

The neuroscience of cortical dementias (Nation et al, 2014)

The neuroscience of implicit moral evaluation (Cowell & Decety, 2015)

The neuroscience of movements vision (Zihl & Heywood, 2015)

The neuroscience of intergroup relations (Cikara & van Bavel, 2014)

The neuroscience of habituated motivation (Masala et al, 2015)

The neuroscience of depression (Singh & Gotlib, 2014)

The neuroscience of obesity, eating behaviour and sleep (Pollack & Lundren,
2014)

The neuroscience of love and hate (Freeman, 2014)

The neuroscience of attachment (Gillath, 2015)

The neuroscience of divergent thinking (Yoruk & Runco, 2014)

The neuroscience of PowerPointTM (Horvath, 2014)

3

The neuroscience of social relations (Ferrari, 2014)

The neuroscience of visual hallucinations (Collerton, 2014)

The neuroscience of narrative (Zak, 2015)

The neuroscience of moral judgment (Greene, 2015)

The neuroscience of musical beat perception (Patel & Iversen, 2014)

The neuroscience of autism (Fizgerald, 2014)

The neuroscience of atypical social cognition (Frappe & Frith, 2014)

The neuroscience of care-giving (Hughes and Baylin, 2012)

The neuroscience of genius (Patterson)

The neuroscience of ethics (Prehn & Heekeren, 2014)

The neuroscience of learning (Knowland & Thomas, 2014)

The neuroscience of influence (Falk, 2014)

The neuroscience of positive emotion (Burgdoff et al, 2014)

The neuroscience of effective counselling (Field, 2014)

The neuroscience of alcohol (Reilly et al, 2014)

The neuroscience of fear extinction (Milad et al, 2014)

The neuroscience of psychotherapy (2014)

The neuroscience of communication and cognition (Hickok, 2014)

The neuroscience of creativity and psychopathy (Carson, 2014)

The neuroscience of decision-making (Walker, 2014)

The neuroscience of clients with Asian heritage (Semrud-Clikerman &

Blesdoe, 2014)

The neuroscience of birth (Bergman, 2014)

Note that, by now, the field has expanded and the possessor has become much
more varied and exotic. In addition to the common-or-garden decision-making,
positive emotions, genius and cortical dementias, we now see effective
counselling, psychotherapy, mindfulness meditation, inspirational leadership,
musical beat perception, clients with Asian heritage, and, excitingly,
PowerpointTM and birth.
Ill be taking bets on the most eccentric use of the phrase in 2020.
Reference

Wilkins, R.H. (1992). Neurosurgical Classics. USA: American Association of

Neurological Surgeons.

GNM is Programme Director & Reader in Psychology at Regents University London

(Twitter: @thatneilmartin)