Abstract
Neuroimaging and neuropsychological methods have contributed much toward an understanding of the information processing systems of the human brain in the last few decades, but to what extent do cognitive neuroscientific findings represent and generalize to the inter- and intra-brain dynamics engaged in adapting to naturalistic situations? If it is not marked, and experimental designs lack ecological validity, then this stands to potentially impact the practical applications of a paradigm. In no other domain is this more important to acknowledge than in human clinical neuroimaging research, wherein reduced ecological validity could mean a loss in clinical utility. One way to improve the generalizability and representativeness of findings is to adopt a more “real-world” approach to the development and selection of experimental designs and neuroimaging techniques to investigate the clinically-relevant phenomena of interest. For example, some relatively recent developments to neuroimaging techniques such as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) make it possible to create experimental designs using naturalistic tasks that would otherwise not be possible within the confines of a conventional laboratory. Mental health, cognitive interventions, and the present challenges to investigating the brain during treatment are discussed, as well as how the ecological use of fNIRS might be helpful in bridging the explanatory gaps to understanding the cultivation of mental health.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Neuroimaging and Stimulation, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry
Some relatively recent developments to neuroimaging techniques such as functional near-infrared spectroscopy make it possible to create experimental designs using naturalistic tasks that would otherwise not be possible within the confines of a conventional laboratory
Mental health has long been a central topic of investigation in clinical psychology and psychiatry [see [1], for review], but it has steadily been a growing subject of interest of government, education, and business institutions, as well as of other academic fields such as those comprising cognitive neuroscience and, importantly, of society on the whole
Summary
The many initiatives and movements away from mental health stigma have been exceedingly impactful, in that more people are beginning to discern that psychopathological symptoms such as experiencing emotion dysregulation and engaging in maladaptive behavior might suggest a disordered mind, the presence of symptoms is not indicative of there being something fundamentally wrong with them—something inherently weak in their personhood—and, more people are reaching out for help [e.g., [4]]. Emotion regulation strategies for facilitating cognitive change have been found to correlate negatively with psychopathological symptoms [see [55], for review], these tasks fail to capture the recogitation that seems to be critical to disputing dysfunctional appraisal operations, do not target specific dysfunctional appraisal operations (i.e., instead, the contents and objects of reappraisal relate to the presented stimuli), and the stimuli seldom represent personally relevant, goal-incongruent situations; stimuli are restricted to visual images rather than to the linguistic propositions clients might hear in real clinical situations Such paradigms are sufficient for investigating the neural bases of emotion regulation, but are ecologically limited in the ways they generalize to the clinical domain and, hinders our ability to FIGURE 1 | Data collection in the clinical neuroscience of mental health interventions. Bolster a neuroscientific understanding of the role of cognitive restructuring in cultivating mental health
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