This study explores how scientific simplifications, such as partitioning the brain into distinct regions, shape scientific investigation. One hundred fifty-six psychology undergraduates (novices) and thirty-one neuroscientists (experts) explored a fictional brain segment using neuroimaging and lesioning experiments. Experts engaged in broader exploration than novices, with experimental diversity positively correlating with learning outcomes for both groups. The brain’s partitioning into regions affected participants’ experimental choices and learning success, though these effects varied across individuals. Novices favored testing boundaries between regions, while both groups focused on prototypical “skeletal" locations. These biases affected learning success: novices excelled at identifying signals near boundaries, whereas experts were better at locating signals near the centers of regions. Additionally, both groups demonstrated conceptual expectations associating a discovered signal with only one region and assuming a one-to-one mapping between signals and behavioral tasks. Understanding how simplifications influence scientific experimentation is key to re-engineering the conceptual foundations of science.