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Field experimentation enhances translation for behavioral neuroscience

Neuropsychopharmacology (2025)Cite this article

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The brain did not evolve in a lab. It evolved in forests, deserts, oceans—amid predators, rivals, mates, and uncertainty. Yet, behavioral neuroscience continues to extract behavioral and physiological information from captive animals in socially and ecologically impoverished conditions. Laboratory studies have begun to incorporate more ethological elements—social housing, testing both sexes, naturalistic paradigms, even “re-wilding” animals into semi-natural enclosures [1]. Yet progress in field studies has not kept pace. We simultaneously need field research to become more experimental, mechanistic, and causally informative – to better inform laboratory studies and enhance their translational value.

Field studies are rich in ecological validity, offering insight into how behavior unfolds in the wild. But field research sacrifices precision and control—key ingredients for inference about brain mechanisms. Laboratory studies, meanwhile, offer exquisite control and tractability but at the cost of generalizability, resulting in a translational gap [1]. We continue to develop theories of brain-behavior relationships under conditions that no animal—including humans—has evolved to navigate.

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Funding

The research related to this article is supported by a Brain Initiative: Brain-Behavior Quantification and Synchronization – Transformative and Integrative Models of Behavior at the Organismal Level R34 Grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health (R34-DA061925) awarded to J.C.B., S.B.F. and Dr. Marcela Benítez (Emory University).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Jacinta C. Beehner

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Shelly B. Flagel

  3. Michigan Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Shelly B. Flagel

Authors
  1. Jacinta C. Beehner
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  2. Shelly B. Flagel
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JB and SBF both contributed to the conception of this framework and article. JB wrote the original draft with edits and revisions by SBF. Both authors approved the final version to be published.

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Correspondence to Shelly B. Flagel.

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Cite this article

Beehner, J.C., Flagel, S.B. Field experimentation enhances translation for behavioral neuroscience. Neuropsychopharmacol. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02177-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-025-02177-1

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