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Confronting racially exclusionary practices in the acquisition and analyses of neuroimaging data

Nature Neuroscience volume 26, pages 4–11 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Across the brain sciences, institutions and individuals have begun to actively acknowledge and address the presence of racism, bias, and associated barriers to inclusivity within our community. However, even with these recent calls to action, limited attention has been directed to inequities in the research methods and analytic approaches we use. The very process of science, including how we recruit, the methodologies we utilize and the analyses we conduct, can have marked downstream effects on the equity and generalizability of scientific discoveries across the global population. Despite our best intentions, the use of field-standard approaches can inadvertently exclude participants from engaging in research and yield biased brain–behavior relationships. To address these pressing issues, we discuss actionable ways and important questions to move the fields of neuroscience and psychology forward in designing better studies to address the history of exclusionary practices in human brain mapping.

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Fig. 1: In the United States, white and non-Hispanic or Latino participants are overrepresented in human neuroscience research.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH120080 and R01MH123245 to A.J.H.) and the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at Yale University (Postdoctoral Fellowship for Academic Diversity to E.D.). J.K. was supported by NIH K00NS115331 and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: J. A. Ricard, T. C. Parker.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    J. A. Ricard, E. Dhamala & A. J. Holmes

  2. Interdepartmental Neuroscience Program, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA

    T. C. Parker & A. J. Holmes

  3. Neuroscience Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    J. Kwasa

  4. Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    A. Allsop & A. J. Holmes

  5. Wu Tsai Institute, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    A. J. Holmes

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  1. J. A. Ricard
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Ricard, J.A., Parker, T.C., Dhamala, E. et al. Confronting racially exclusionary practices in the acquisition and analyses of neuroimaging data. Nat Neurosci 26, 4–11 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01218-y

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