At the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting, which hosts roughly 30,000 researchers each year (1), one can attend talks by eminent scientists on topics ranging from the structure of individual molecules to the foibles of moral reasoning. The tremendous breadth of research in the neurosciences raises the question of whether and how different levels of scientific analysis can be integrated to form a mechanistic understanding of cognitive phenomena.

A classic example in neuroscience is learning, which is studied simultaneously by scientists examining patterns of gene expression, the formation of new neurons in the brain, physiological changes in individual neurons, computational models of neural networks, changes in behavior of laboratory animals, and neural correlates of human learning. Although it is unclear how these different empirical measures are related to each other, it is typically assumed that they are and that each approach offers some insight into the mechanisms at play when we learn, say, a foreign language.

For many, the challenge of integrating these disparate levels of analysis may be viewed as the need to outline a causal chain from molecules to behavior. Indeed, this reductionist principle of mechanism forms the basis of much of modern medicine, which manipulates molecular signaling pathways to produce changes in behavior, such as is the case in drugs that treat depression. However, as illustrated in the case of learning, oftentimes the initiating event is best understood at the behavioral level, for example reading a book or observing the behavior of another person, suggesting that a systems approach, in which multiple levels of analysis are considered, may be necessary to understand the complex phenomena that comprise human behavior.

In neuroscience the adoption of a systems approach is gaining popularity. This year a “Biology of Cognition” meeting sponsored by Massachusetts General Hospital, the pharmaceutical company Ipsen, and Cell Press, a high-profile publisher of neuroscience research, will be organized around five cognitive areas and will explicitly aim to unite “researchers from cognitive science, systems neuroscience, cognitive psychology, molecular/cellular neuroscience, genetics and neuropathology” and to stimulate interactions between researchers working on the same phenomenon but at different levels of analysis (2).

There is more evidence of this shift as well, whether it is in classrooms that focus on question driven, rather than technique driven learning (3), or in the hiring practices of research organizations. Oftentimes scientists are defined by the techniques they use. However, Janelia Farms, Howard Hughes Medical Institutes new biomedical research center, is designed around questions that “require expertise from disparate areas” and has built its scientific community around researchers focused on a few specific areas of concentration (4). To date Janelia has received support from the scientific community in that it has attracted many leading scientists.

This emphasis on drawing on different experimental techniques and on integrating levels of analysis, if fruitful, has tremendous implications for the way research is taught, conducted, and published. The traditional divisions of science--chemistry, biology, psychology, physics, etc.--may eventually be shed completely, as interdisciplinary research becomes the norm. One university could instead have a center devoted to learning and memory, whereas another could choose to focus on climate change, drawing from researchers studying the economics, sociology, and chemistry related to that issue. The shift toward integration could also affect scientific publication, which already favors mechanistic accounts that draw from different techniques, as well as research funding programs, which may focus on larger “center” grants given to teams of researchers working on a single problem, as opposed to grants targeting a single lab.

Although the trend toward trying to connect levels of analysis is particularly apparent in neuroscience, it is clearly relevant to many fields that aim to understand and manipulate complex systems, such as economics and ecology.

References
1) Society for Neurosciences annual meeting, http://www.sfn.org/index.cfm?pagename=annualMeeting_statistics&section=annualMeeting

2) 2008 Biology of Cognition, http://www.massgeneral.org/cvrc/meetings.html

3) X2 Forecast: New approach to neuroscience education tests model for the future of biology education, http://sciencex2.com/en/node/400

4) Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia farms, http://www.hhmi.org/janelia/science.html