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One of the catchiest title suggestions for me was @jonsca's "Brain and Behavior". Unfortunately, as pointed out by @BenBrocka the title gives too low level and reductionist a view. I fear it would alienate certain parts of psychology. We definitely need a title that features both the Mind and Brain in spirit, hence the following three suggestions:

  1. Mind and Brain, or
  2. Mind and Brain Sciences, or
  3. Mind and Brain Research

The first title is snappier and shorter, the second makes it clear that the site intends to take the scientific view, and the third makes it clear that we want to be a tool for researchers (and others interested in the formal study of the mind/brain).

The titles are shorter than the alternative "Mind, Brain, and Behavior" and less clunk than Cognitive Science and Psychology or Psychology and Neuroscience. Added bonus, is that the title Mind and Brain is used as a top-level Portal on Wikipedia which mirrors our scope closely.

Thoughts?

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    I'm on board with this, good suggestion. Commented May 2, 2012 at 6:23
  • Doesn't have quite they same ring to it...
    – Zelda
    Commented May 2, 2012 at 13:56
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    I strongly prefer "Mind, Brain, and Behavior". Mind is inclusive to Psychology, Brain is inclusive to biology, and Behavior is inclusive to animal behavior type disciplines. Plus, the site can be mbb.se
    – Preece
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 9:29

1 Answer 1

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This is just brainstorming a few pros and cons:

Pros

  • It does a good job encompassing the broad range of disciplines that this site represents. It is very inclusive, yet it doesn't really give undue weight to any one topic.
  • It's pretty short and snappy.

Cons

  • We have an existing url prefix that says cogsci. Thus, we'd either have to change or have an inconsistency between title and url.
  • It does not leverage existing disciplinary terms (like psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience)
  • Change is generally bad from a branding perspective.
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  • I agree with the cons, except for #3... I don't think we have much of a brand yet, so change from that perspective probably won't hurt much. Commented May 2, 2012 at 7:09
  • I wouldn't worry about the URL with all of the magic that can be done with redirects. Commented May 2, 2012 at 10:23
  • @ChuckSherrington the hardest thing might be coming up with a new prefix... we can't use 'mind.SE' or 'brain.SE' without biasing it and 'mindandbrain.SE' or 'mindbrain.SE' is just awkard. Commented May 2, 2012 at 10:49
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    @ArtemKaznatcheev I would gladly let someone on the team worry about that aspect of it... honestly. Commented May 2, 2012 at 11:42
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    The subdomain change is pretty easy. And I don't think mind/brain only has a (shortened) subdomain is a problem; Movies & TV just has "movies" but they're also about TV
    – Zelda
    Commented May 14, 2012 at 21:25

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