Figure 7.

Logical flaws and inadequate assumptions in translational behavioral brain research. (A) Drugs that lower human anxiety and fear are given to animals. If these drugs alter motor activity in tests assumed to measure anxiety, scores are taken as a proxy for anxiety levels. (B) Human declarative and episodic memory is thought to depend on proper hippocampal function. Since hippocampal lesions in rodents cause impaired spatial learning, variation in water maze place navigation is used as a proxy for hippocampal memory functions. (C) The mechanistic standard assumption is that a removed or inactivated part of the brain is responsible for the control of specific behaviors. (D) The real situation shows that the behavioral change is a joint function of the remaining genome or brain circuitry. Many processes underpinning a behavioral change after invasive manipulations are unknown and thus much of the observed changes could be caused partially by unpredictable chance events.