The importance of diversity in cognitive neuroscience

The vast majority of what is known about the neural underpinnings of human cognition comes from studies limited to racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically homogeneous samples. Furthermore, although most studies include both males and females in their samples, sex differences in patterns of brain activity and performance are rarely evaluated. We discuss recent research suggesting that one's socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and sex contribute to individual differences in neural structure, function, and related cognitive performance across a variety of cognitive domains. These studies make it clear that findings from decades of cognitive neuroscience research are likely not generalizable to a population that is much more diverse than the samples tested. We argue that these demographics cannot be ignored if we want to understand the neural substrates of human cognition for the diverse, general population. Cognitive neuroscience has been, and continues to be, used to inform education policy and clinical practice. We argue that greater diversity in cognitive neuroscience research is needed to improve reproducibility and to serve the treatment needs of a diverse population. We discuss the challenges to achieving this goal, including consideration of confounding and correlated variables, recruitment, necessary costs, and best practices for dealing with them.