[1] Members of the network study how the complexities of social norms, varied life experiences, details of laboratory conditions and biology interact to affect the results of neuroscientific research.
[3][4][5] Its founding was part of a period of increased interest and activity in interdisciplinary research connecting neuroscience and the social sciences.
[6] The group, comprising scholars who specialized in feminism, queer theory and gender studies, formed to tackle "neurosexism"[3] as defined by Cordelia Fine in her 2010 book Delusions of Gender: "uncritical biases in [neuroscientific] research and public perception, and their societal impacts on an individual, structural, and symbolic level.
"[7] Research can suffer from neurosexism by failing to include the social factors and expectations that shape sex differences, which possibly leads to making inferences based on flawed data.
[11][12][13] Organisers Anelis Kaiser and Isabelle Dussauge described its long terms goals "to elaborate a new conceptual approach of the relation between gender and the brain, one that could help to head gender theorists and neuroscientists to an innovative interdisciplinary place, far away from social and biological determinisms but still engaging with the materiality of the brain.