Qualitative Versus Quantitative Individual Differences in Cognitive Neuroscience

Individual differences in cognitive performance can be quantitative or qualitative in nature. Accounting for qualitative as well as quantitative individual differences is of importance for cognitive neuroscience, where a central goal is not only to relate brain function to behavior generally, but also to understand and predict individual behavior from neural data. In turn, cognitive neuroscience can help determine the nature of individual differences by revealing the underlying neural mechanisms and uncover qualitative individual differences that are not immediately apparent from behavioral data, enhancing our understanding of why and how people behave the way they do.