Interdisciplinary research is inherently exciting because it usually involves working on new frontiers. A report from the National Research Council of the National Academies identified four drivers of interdisciplinary research: 

  • Both nature and society are fundamentally complex systems, which do not yield all their secrets to discipline-based approaches
  • The problems that define the frontiers of science are frequently found at the intersections between multiple disciplines. Many of our best scientists are attracted to work on problems of this kind
  • Modern society increasingly requires science with a broad perspective for responsible decision-making in many arenas. Such science will necessarily be informed by expertise that reaches across many intersecting disciplines
  • Generative technologies tend to span disciplinary boundaries. These technologies and tools open paths to new knowledge in transformative ways

The report points out that when science is healthy and traditional disciplines interact, change is constantly occurring, and interdisciplinary interaction creates new knowledge and new fields:

  • Biology + chemistry = biochemistry
  • Astronomy + physics = astrophysics
  • Neurology + psychiatry + pharmacology= neuropsychopharmacology
  • Biology + information technology + computer science = bioinformatics
  • Geology + physics = geophysics

Even the name of our field, neuroimaging, highlights its inherent interdisciplinarity: it is the union between the study of one of the most complex systems in the universe, the brain, and one of the most powerful tools in biomedical research, the tools of imaging. Consequently, the Iowa Neuroimaging Consortium thrives on interdisciplinarity. Brain scientists come from a variety of fields and interact with one another and with imaging scientists. They include neurologists, psychiatrists, neurosurgeons, neuropharmacologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, geneticists, and molecular biologists. Imaging scientists include biomedical engineers, computer scientists, neuroradiologists, and radiochemists. Bridges between these groups, which actively collaborate with one another, are also built by people with expertise in biostatistics and bioinformatics. The products of all these interactions includes the development of tools that become widely used, such as software for image analysis, and the further development of new fields, such as neuroeconomics.