PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Alex Gomez-Marin
AU  - Joseph J. Paton
AU  - Adam R. Kampff
AU  - Rui M. Costa
AU  - Zachary F. Mainen
TI  - Big Behavioral Data: Psychology, Ethology and the Foundations of Neuroscience
AID  - 10.1101/006809
DP  - 2014 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 006809
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/07/02/006809.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/07/02/006809.full
AB  - Behavior is a unifying organismal process where genes, neural function, anatomy and environment converge and interrelate. Here we review the current state and discuss the future impact of accelerating advances in technology for behavioral studies, focusing on rodents as an exemplar. We frame our perspective in three dimensions: degree of experimental constraint, dimensionality of data, and level of description. We argue that “big behavioral data” presents challenges proportionate to its promise and describe how these challenges might be met through opportunities afforded by the two rival conceptual legacies of 20th century behavioral science, ethology and psychology. We conclude that although “more is not necessarily better”, copious, quantitative and open behavioral data has the potential to transform and unify these two disciplines and to solidify the foundations of others, including neuroscience, but only if the development of novel theoretical frameworks and improved experimental designs matches the technological progress.