Some unsettled problems in behavioral neuroscience research

The goal of behavioral neuroscience is to map psychological concepts onto physiological and anatomical concepts and vice versa. The present paper reflects on some of the hidden obstacles that have to be overcome in order to find unique psychophysiological relationships. These are, among others: (1) the different status of concepts which are defined in the two domains (ontological subjectivity in psychology and ontological objectivity in physiology); (2) the distinct hierarchical levels to which concepts from the two domains may belong; (3) ambiguity of concepts, because—due to limited measurement resolution or definitional shortcomings—they sometimes do not cover unique states or processes; (4) ignored context dependencies. Moreover, it is argued that due to the gigantic number of states and state changes, which are possible in a nervous system, it seems unlikely that neuroscience can provide exact causal explanations and predictions of behavior. Rather, as in statistical thermodynamics the transition from the microlevel of explanations to the macrolevel is only possible with probabilistic uncertainty.