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Mitigating white Western individualistic bias and creating more inclusive neuroscience

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 23, pages 389–390 (2022)Cite this article

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Neuroscience is not meeting its full potential. We suggest that an important contributor to this problem is a legacy of unchecked white Western individualist bias. We offer a relational rubric of principles with illustrative cases that scientists can use to enhance scientific imagination and rigour while fostering inclusive scientific communities to mitigate bias.

The neuroscientific enterprise is not meeting its full potential for the Global Majority1, a term that refers to the majority of the world who are non-white and is meant to empower those who might typically be referred to as a ‘minority’. For example, electroencephalography (EEG), a technique used for about 100 years globally in research and to make determinations of death, still records substantial noise when reading signals from scalps that grow coarse and curly hair, as in populations of African descent2. Moreover, individuals of African descent and other members of the Global Majority represent less than 5% of participants in studies of CNS disorders, and brain cell census inventories are over-representative of people with European ancestry3.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank T. Brown, G. Hue, J. Sarrett, Z. Li and A. Moss for valuable discussions that informed thinking on this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neuroethics and Neurotech Innovation Collaboratory, Center for Ethics Neuroethics Program, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Linzie Taylor & Karen S. Rommelfanger

  2. Neuroscience Graduate Program, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Linzie Taylor & Karen S. Rommelfanger

  3. Institute of Neuroethics Think and Do Tank, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Linzie Taylor & Karen S. Rommelfanger

  4. Department of Neurology, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Karen S. Rommelfanger

  5. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Karen S. Rommelfanger

Authors
  1. Linzie Taylor
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  2. Karen S. Rommelfanger
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Correspondence to Linzie Taylor or Karen S. Rommelfanger.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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African Ancestry Neuroscience Research Initiative: https://aaneuroscienceresearch.com/

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Taylor, L., Rommelfanger, K.S. Mitigating white Western individualistic bias and creating more inclusive neuroscience. Nat Rev Neurosci 23, 389–390 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-022-00602-8

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