Neural explanations of behaviour

Science is always theory laden: The experiments that one performs and their interpretations are both influenced by the philosophical framework adopted —explicitly or implicitly— by the scientist. We are interested in whether there can be neural explanations of behaviour, meaning whether looking at neural activity can add any explanatory power to studying the behaviour itself. Among the potential neural explanations of behaviour, we focus in those based on neural manifolds, mathematical objects that capture the collective activity of neural populations and their constraints. This research connects directly with theories of complex systems, and philosophical concepts such as emergence, and reductionism.