Brain and Behavior in the Wild: Mobile Neuroimaging and Wearable Technologies

Research in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience is increasingly shifting towards understanding how the brain operates in the dynamic contexts of everyday life. Traditionally, most knowledge about brain function has been derived from tightly controlled laboratory or clinical settings, which often fail to account for the complexity and richness of real-world environmental and social influences. Recent advancements highlight the limitations of these controlled paradigms for capturing the temporal and contextual variability that shapes cognition, emotion, and symptoms across the lifespan. While several studies have demonstrated the promise of mobile neuroimaging and wearable solutions, critical questions remain about their ability to provide ecologically valid, reliable, and clinically useful insights. As novel devices and analytic methods emerge, the field faces crucial debates concerning data quality, interpretability, contextual sensitivity, and the practical and ethical challenges of integrating these tools into diverse real-world scenarios.This Research Topic aims to advance the scientific and clinical understanding of the human brain by leveraging mobile neuroimaging and wearable technologies to assess brain activity and behavior in naturalistic settings. By capturing neural and behavioral signatures during authentic daily experiences, the goal is to address how factors such as movement, sleep, stress, and social interactions influence brain processes and health outcomes. The Research Topic seeks to foster the development and dissemination of innovative approaches that combine neural data with digital phenotyping, ecological momentary assessment, and integrative biomarkers, with a view to both fundamental discovery and clinical translation. Key objectives include improving mechanistic insight, enhancing real-world monitoring and prediction, and overcoming current limitations in reproducibility and inclusivity.The scope of this Research Topic encompasses research conducted in real-world environments using mobile and wearable technologies for the assessment of brain function, cognition, emotion, and behavior. The focus is on studies and methods that go beyond conventional laboratory and clinic settings, with emphasis on technological advances, translational impact, and diverse populations with clinical, neurodevelopmental, or healthy backgrounds. We welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Development and validation of mobile neuroimaging (e.g., EEG, fNIRS) and physiological sensing approaches• Integration of wearable devices with digital phenotyping and ecological momentary assessment• Brain-behavior relationships in the context of movement, sleep, stress, and social interactions• Applications to neuropsychiatric, neurodevelopmental, and neurological disorders• Approaches to signal quality, feasibility, motion robustness, and reproducibility in diverse real-world scenarios• Ethical, privacy, accessibility, and implementation considerations in applied mobile neuroscience Topic editors: Adham Atyabi, Nadia Saderi, Kenichi Yamada Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79208/brain-and-behavior-in-the-wild-mobile-neuroimaging-and-wearable-technologies