I caught a fascinating exchange online the other day. A research psychologist I’m connected with had published a fairly pointed critique of neuroscience, arguing that while it’s become quite a dominant framework for explaining human behavior and well-being, it’s ultimately guilty of over claiming territory it really shouldn’t be. A neuroscientist colleague of his quickly fired back, and what followed was one of those lively, intelligent, slightly territorial academic spats that are usually a bit of fun to watch from the sidelines.
To me, the interesting point wasn’t about who was right. It was that neither seemed to notice they were pretty well doing the same thing rhetorically, just from opposite ends of the same reductionist telescope. Both were essentially arguing that only my field holds the defining answers here. And it’s a polarization in science that also has real world consequences for coaches if we’re not able to parse and understand the points in any meaningful way ourselves.
When statements come from regarded researchers, distinguished professors and PhD’s, they carry a seductive cachet of confidence and validity hard to refute or even question when you’re a mere lay reader. But that would be a mistake! And this is also an issue within coaching itself with regarded coaches making similar claims about many of the sciences and particularly about neuroscience.
The Irresistible Allure of Brain Science
Let’s be honest: neuroscience is seductive. It’s always been the “sexier” science with it’s gizmo’s and amazing revelations about the equally amazing brain. When someone tells you something framed as “rejection activates the same brain regions as physical pain,” it feels more real, more grounded, and more scientific than just saying “rejection hurts.” The colorful fMRI blobs, the expensive machinery, the Latin-sounding brain regions—it all carries a kind of authority that behavioral or phenomenological language doesn’t quite match.
And coaching has certainly not been immune to this effect.
Over the past decade or so, “brain-based coaching” and “neuroscience coaching skills” have become something of an industry of their own. Coaches now routinely invoke neural network firing, dopamine, cortisol, oxytocin and the amygdala as if these terms alone are self-explanatory guides to what actually works in a coaching conversation or is happening in a client’s mind. The implicit logic goes something like: neuroscience shows that these coaching moves create these neurochemical shifts—or light up these cranial regions—therefore a certain approach, move, question or prompt is scientifically validated to achieve X result.
But there’s a significant problem with this view. Several, actually.
What Neuroscience Can and Can’t Tell Us
The psychologist in that online exchange made a point I found genuinely sharp: a lot of what gets called neuroscience in the well-being space is just phenomenological redescription in fancier dress. Let me explain.
We’ve known that relationships matter well before brain scans endorsed the view. We also already knew exercise improves cognition, that habits are hard to break and that early experiences shape later ones. Discovering the neural correlates of these things hasn’t explained their mechanisms or the facts of them more deeply—it has added an interesting dimension to their study for scientist. But for others it’s often merely tended to make them sound more official. In those cases the neural correlate example is doing more rhetorical work, than real explanatory work.
The neuroscientist’s counter-point was also fair: mechanism does sometimes matter beyond description. Knowing why exercise works at a neurobiological level—not just that it works—can genuinely inform intervention design in ways purely behavioral observation wouldn’t generate. That’s a real contribution.
So both are right about each other’s blind spots. The problem is neither is fully right on their own as a way of explain thinking, behavior, meaning and all the other rich areas covered by the interdisciplinary field known as cognitive science. This evolved in the mid to late 20th century, gathering psychologists, philosophers, linguists, neuroscientists, biologists, anthropologists and many others under one umbrella in order to better understand the mind, its processes and human behavior. The field was initially dominated by computational metaphors of the human as computers and AI were in their infancy and researchers were wanting to create human-like devices. In that thinking framework brain was a CPU managing external inputs and giving directions. Unfortunately early robotics experiments using this view just didn’t cut it. Brain did not, in fact, equal mind!
It therefore became clear that a multidisciplinary approach was essential in order to truly understand humans and particularly their cognitive processes. Enter cognitive science, a field which has evolved further into 4E Cognition which states that the mind and cognition are enacted, embodied, embedded and extended processes.
The Overclaiming Problem in Coaching
Here’s where all of this now lands practically. You’ve seen the claims everywhere in coach training materials, in marketing copy, in conference keynotes:
“Neuroscience shows that the brain can’t distinguish between real and imagined experiences—so visualization is neurologically proven to work.”
“Metaphors activate neural circuits associated with creativity, therefore they make us more creative.”
“When you ask powerful questions, you activate the prefrontal cortex and inhibit the amygdala’s threat response.”
“Oxytocin is the trust hormone—so X type of coaching creates the neurochemical conditions for change.”
While each of these contains a grain of something real, each also dramatically oversimplifies what the research actually shows. And each of them does something subtly corrosive: it substitutes the authority of neuroscience for the actual, messier, complex, harder-to-quantify work of understanding what happens between two people in a coaching conversation.
fMRI studies measure metabolic proxies and network activation, not mental states. Correlations between brain activity and behavior don’t establish causation, inner mental processes, context, historical factors or traumas and so many other variables. And the jump from “this brain region is active during X” to “therefore coaching intervention Y is neurologically validated” involves about fifteen logical steps that nobody is showing their work on.
The triune brain model—still widely cited in coaching circles—was abandoned by neuroscience decades ago. Polyvagal theory, genuinely interesting and partially supported, gets routinely stretched well beyond what its evidence base can hold. And “dopamine hits,” “amygdala hijacks” and “rewiring your brain” have become almost meaningless as coaching currency—deployed so loosely that they’ve stopped doing any real explanatory work at all.
The Fight Nobody Needs to Win
Turning back to that online exchange I mentioned, the point both were missing is that the argument itself rests on a shared assumption: that there is one level where the real explanation of human experience lives.
For the psychologist, that level is behavior and psychology. For the neuroscientist, it’s brain mechanisms. But human beings aren’t reducible to either. We’re not brains having experiences, and we’re not behaviors with brains attached. We’re embodied, relational, context-dependent, meaning-making creatures whose cognition is distributed across body, environment and relationship simultaneously.
This is what 4E cognitive science—cognition as Embodied, Embedded, Enacted and Extended—actually demonstrates. Mind doesn’t happen inside a skull. It arises from the dynamic interplay of brain, body, world and other people. You can’t flatten that into neural substrate any more than you can ignore that neural substrate is real.
Which means both disciplines have something genuine to offer, and both are wrong to think they have the whole picture. Psychology and philosophy give us the phenomenological and relational texture of human experience that neuroscience can’t access. Neuroscience gives us mechanistic insight that behavioral observation alone can’t generate. Neither is sufficient on its own. And neither, frankly, is sufficient for coaching on its own either.
What This Means for Coaches
It means being better educated and honest about what we actually know—and where we’re borrowing authority we haven’t earned and are simply overclaiming which does real harm in the long run.
Neuroscience can certainly help inform our coaching as can the broader field of neurobiology. Better understanding the relationship between nervous system regulation and relational safety, for instance, has real implications for how we manage sessions and coregulate, how we work with clients in activation, and how we create the conditions for deeper processing. That’s legitimate and grounded.
What isn’t grounded is using neuroscience as an authority-donating device by invoking brain science to make our coaching sound more rigorous than the evidence actually supports. It’s a version of the same problem the psychologist was pointing to: the neural correlate as rhetorical flourish rather than genuine explanatory contribution.
The deepest work in coaching happens at a level that neither neuroscience nor behavioral psychology fully captures—in the felt, relational, embodied field of two people genuinely present with each other. That’s not mysticism. It’s just that some of the most important things that happen in human development occur at a level of complexity that no single discipline currently has adequate tools to describe.
Epistemic humility isn’t the enemy of rigor. It is rigor.
About Rod Francis
Rod Francis is the founder of InterActualizer and the creator of Emergent Coach Training—an ICF-accredited program grounded in 4E cognitive science, embodied phenomenology, and over 20 years of practice. His recent peer-reviewed paper on embodiment and 4E cognition in coaching was published in Philosophy of Coaching: An International Journal (Vol. 10, Issue 2, 2025).
Explore Emergent Coach Training here
Connect with Rod for coaching or consultancy here
FAQ for What Neuroscience Gets Wrong for Coaching
Does neuroscience prove that coaching works?
While neuroscience provides interesting data, it doesn’t “prove” coaching in the way many claim. Brain scans (fMRI) measure metabolic proxies—like blood flow—rather than actual mental states or the quality of a coaching relationship. Neuroscience shows us the neural correlates of behavior, but it doesn’t necessarily explain the complex, relational experience of a coaching conversation.
What is the “Triune Brain” and why is it problematic in coaching?
The Triune Brain model (the idea of a “lizard brain,” “mammal brain,” and “human brain”) was a theory from the 1960s that has been largely abandoned by modern neuroscience. While it is a popular metaphor in coaching circles, it oversimplifies how the brain actually works as an integrated system. Relying on outdated models can lead to overclaiming and a misunderstanding of a client’s actual experience.
What are “neuro-proxies” in coaching?
A neuro-proxy is when a coach uses a scientific term (like “amygdala hijack” or “dopamine hit”) as a substitute for a real human experience. While these terms sound authoritative, they often oversimplify the situation. Using this “borrowed authority” can actually get in the way of the messier, more important work of understanding the specific context and history of the person in front of you.
If neuroscience isn’t the whole answer, what is?
The article argues that the most profound shifts in coaching happen in the “embodied, relational field” between two people. This aligns with 4E Cognitive Science, which views the mind as something that happens through the interaction of the brain, body, environment, and other people, rather than just a series of chemical reactions inside a skull.
How can coaches use neuroscience more responsibly?
Coaches can be more responsible by staying humble about what we actually know. This means avoiding “overclaiming,” acknowledging the limits of current research, and focusing on the felt sense and the relationship rather than just using “brain science” to sound more official.
