About this Research Topic

Background

International professional neuroscience organizations, granting agencies, and academic institutions have pledged their commitment to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion with public statements of support and promises to increase training and funding opportunities for underrepresented scientists. At the same time, there is growing recognition that many human neuroscience studies to date have had insufficient representation of the rich tapestry of diversity across the globe, resulting in demographically skewed samples upon which significant medical protocols, pharmacological dosing recommendations, and governmental policies have been shaped. Finally, much of the inquiry and analyses of potential variance across diverse groups in the neurosciences has taken a hegemonic view, with little attention to the structurally racist, biased, and/or colonialist systems of oppression that are likely to undergird these potential variances. As we move into the next decade of neuroscience research, there is an urgent need to more equitably cite and include the voices of diverse cross-disciplinary health equity researchers who can bring their decades long expertise to enhance our perspectives of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in human neuroscience, neuropharmacology, computational neuroscience, developmental neuroscience, neurogenetics, and neuroinformatic inquiries.

To provide a forum for authentic discussion of these issues and elevate our collective understanding, we ground this discussion in the following: justice relates to a concerted effort to dismantle barriers and systemic oppressive forces that impact access and opportunity; equity requires the intentional leveling of the playing field with individualized measures to support equivalent access; diversity appreciates individual attributes including, but not limited to race, ethnicity, genetic ancestry, disability, age, and/or gender identity; and inclusion reflects an intentional process to provide equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be marginalized. Our goal is to provide space for honest reflection of the past and conceptualize cross-disciplinary innovative approaches for just and equitable discussions of diversity in the neurosciences now, and into the future.

With this frame of reference in mind, our Research Topic seeks to highlight perspectives that move beyond a basic understanding of racial, ethnic, genetic ancestral, socioeconomic, ageist, ableist, or other biases in neuroscience research by welcoming the following types of manuscripts:

• General perspectives on the ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and/or internalized oppressive forces that contribute to inequities in neuroscience, either for neuroscientists themselves, or the interpretations of human data in neuroscience studies.
• Research that details interventions to counter the effect of systemic racism, colonialism, or other oppressive forces in diversifying the field of neuroscience at any level (with K-12 students, undergraduate/graduate students, postdocs, faculty, industry and/or community leaders).
• Research that relies on theoretical models from the social sciences, public health, and/or the humanities to guide the authentic assessment of topics related to diverse variables such as race, ethnicity, genetic ancestry, socioeconomic status, gender identity, disability, etc.
• Systematic reviews that summarize and critique the state-of diverse samples or constructs within the neurosciences.

We strongly encourage manuscripts where the lead/corresponding author is a member of a racial or ethnic group traditionally underrepresented in the sciences (https://diversity.nih.gov/about-us/population-underrepresented) or from a lower- to middle-income country (https://wellcome.org/grant-funding/guidance/low-and-middle-income-countries). However, we will welcome the submission of any article within the scope above irrespective of author racial or ethnic membership or home country.

Keywords: diversity, equity, inclusion, neuroscience, race, socioeconomic status, gender, ancestry

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

Frequently asked questions

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