Statistical applications in neuroscience: A view from Neurocognitive Communication at MSU
Ralf Schmälzle, Department of Communication, Michigan State University, USA
Neurocognitive Communication, a new focus area of Michigan State’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences, examines the neural underpinnings of human communication and social interaction. The goal of this talk is to inspire statisticians to see application potential in this field and to stimulate discussion about similarities and differences between classical “cognitive neuroscience” statistics, which has been developed over the past decades. I will showcase work that measures common brain dynamics between people (e.g. during movie-watching or during dyadic interaction), work that links neural- and social-level variables (e.g. SES, social network metrics), and work that uses brain activity to predict outcomes (e.g. predict which messages will be persuasive or get shared on social media). Finally, I will briefly touch on the field’s emerging computational infrastructure, reproducibility, and big-data/data-sharing initiatives.