Computational analyses in cognitive neuroscience: In defense of biologicalimplausibility

Because cognitive neuroscience researchers attempt to understand the human mind by bridging behavior and brain, they expect computational analyses to be biologically plausible. In this paper, biologically implausible computat ional analyses are shown to have critical and essential roles in the variou s stages and domains of cognitive neuroscience research. Specifically, biol ogically implausible computational analyses can contribute to (I) understan ding and characterizing the problem that is being studied, (2) examining th e availability of information and its representation, and (3) evaluating an d understanding the neuronal solution. In the context of the distinct types of contributions made by certain computational analyses, the biological pl ausibility of those analyses is altogether irrelevant. These biologically i mplausible models are nevertheless relevant and important for biologically driven research.