What underlies the emergence of stimulus- and domain-specific neural responses? Commentary on Hernandez, Claussenius-Kalman, Ronderos, Castilla-Earls, Sun, Weiss, & Young (2018)

Hernandez et al (2018) provide a welcome historical perspective and synthesis of emergentist theories over the last decades, particularly in their focus on theoretical differences. Here we discuss a number of neuroimaging findings on the character and drivers of seemingly domain-selective neural response preferences, and how these might bear on the predictiveness of different emergentist accounts.