Neuroscientists often describe neural activity as a representation of something, or claim to have found evidence for a neural representation, but there is considerable ambiguity about what such claims entail. Here we develop a thorough account of what ‘representation’ does and should do for neuroscientists in terms of three key aspects of representation. (i) Correlation: a neural representation correlates to its represented content; (ii) causal role: the representation has a characteristic effect on behavior; and (iii) teleology: a goal or purpose served by the behavior and thus the representation. We draw broadly on literature in both neuroscience and philosophy to show how these three aspects are rooted in common approaches to understanding the brain and mind. We first describe different contexts that ‘representation’ has been closely linked to in neuroscience, then discuss each of the three aspects in detail.

神经科学家经常将神经活动描述为某种事物的表征，或者声称已经找到了神经表征的证据，但对于这种说法所包含的内容存在相当大的歧义。在这里，我们根据表征的三个关键方面，对“表征”为神经科学家所做和应该做的事情进行了全面的说明。(i) 相关性：神经表征与其表征内容相关；(ii) 因果作用：表征对行为具有特征性影响；(iii) 目的论：行为和表现所服务的目标或目的。我们广泛地借鉴了神经科学和哲学方面的文献，以展示这三个方面如何植根于理解大脑和思想的通用方法。