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Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the
biological Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary in ...
processes and aspects that underlie
cognition Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, though ...
, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental processes. It addresses the questions of how cognitive activities are affected or controlled by neural circuits in the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both
neuroscience Neuroscience is the science, scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a Multidisciplinary approach, multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, an ...
and
psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience,
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
, physiological psychology and affective neuroscience.Gazzaniga 2002, p. xv Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neurobiology, and
computational modeling Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be dete ...
. Parts of the brain play an important role in this field.
Neuron A neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that communicates with other cells via specialized connections called synapses. The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa ...
s play the most vital role, since the main point is to establish an understanding of cognition from a neural perspective, along with the different lobes of the
cerebral cortex The cerebral cortex, also known as the cerebral mantle, is the outer layer of neural tissue of the cerebrum of the brain in humans and other mammals. The cerebral cortex mostly consists of the six-layered neocortex, with just 10% consisting o ...
. Methods employed in cognitive neuroscience include experimental procedures from
psychophysics Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, ...
and
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
, functional neuroimaging,
electrophysiology Electrophysiology (from Greek , ''ēlektron'', "amber" etymology of "electron"">Electron#Etymology">etymology of "electron" , ''physis'', "nature, origin"; and , ''-logia'') is the branch of physiology that studies the electrical properties of bi ...
,
cognitive genomics Cognitive genomics (or neurative genomics) is the sub-field of genomics pertaining to cognitive function in which the genes and non-coding sequences of an organism's genome related to the health and activity of the brain are studied. By applying ...
, and behavioral genetics. Studies of patients with cognitive deficits due to brain
lesion A lesion is any damage or abnormal change in the tissue of an organism, usually caused by disease or trauma. ''Lesion'' is derived from the Latin "injury". Lesions may occur in plants as well as animals. Types There is no designated classif ...
s constitute an important aspect of cognitive neuroscience. The damages in lesioned brains provide a comparable starting point on regards to healthy and fully functioning brains. These damages change the neural circuits in the brain and cause it to malfunction during basic cognitive processes, such as
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remember ...
or
learning Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of lea ...
. People have learning disabilities and such damage, can be compared with how the healthy neural circuits are functioning, and possibly draw conclusions about the basis of the affected cognitive processes. Some examples of learning disabilities in the brain include places in Wernicke's area, the left side of the temporal lobe, and Brocca's area close to the frontal lobe. Also, cognitive abilities based on brain development are studied and examined under the subfield of developmental cognitive neuroscience. This shows brain development over time, analyzing differences and concocting possible reasons for those differences. Theoretical approaches include
computational neuroscience Computational neuroscience (also known as theoretical neuroscience or mathematical neuroscience) is a branch of neuroscience which employs mathematical models, computer simulations, theoretical analysis and abstractions of the brain to u ...
and
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
.


Historical origins

Cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary area of study that has emerged from
neuroscience Neuroscience is the science, scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a Multidisciplinary approach, multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, an ...
and
psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
.Kosslyn, S, M. & Andersen, R, A. (1992). Frontiers in cognitive neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT press. There are several stages in these disciplines that have changed the way researchers approached their investigations and that led to the field becoming fully established. Although the task of cognitive neuroscience is to describe the neural mechanisms associated with the mind, historically it has progressed by investigating how a certain area of the brain supports a given mental faculty. However, early efforts to subdivide the brain proved to be problematic. The phrenologist movement failed to supply a scientific basis for its theories and has since been rejected. The aggregate field view, meaning that all areas of the brain participated in all behavior, was also rejected as a result of brain mapping, which began with Hitzig and Fritsch's experiments and eventually developed through methods such as
positron emission tomography Positron emission tomography (PET) is a functional imaging technique that uses radioactive substances known as radiotracers to visualize and measure changes in metabolic processes, and in other physiological activities including blood flow, ...
(PET) and
functional magnetic resonance imaging Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...
(fMRI). Gestalt theory,
neuropsychology Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of t ...
, and the
cognitive revolution The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes. It later became known collectively as cognitive science. The relevant areas of interchange were between th ...
were major turning points in the creation of cognitive neuroscience as a field, bringing together ideas and techniques that enabled researchers to make more links between behavior and its neural substrates.


Origins in philosophy

Philosophers have always been interested in the mind: "the idea that explaining a phenomenon involves understanding the mechanism responsible for it has deep roots in the History of Philosophy from atomic theories in 5th century B.C. to its rebirth in the 17th and 18th century in the works of Galileo, Descartes, and Boyle. Among others, it's Descartes' idea that machines humans build could work as models of scientific explanation." For example,
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
thought the brain was the body's cooling system and the capacity for intelligence was located in the heart. It has been suggested that the first person to believe otherwise was the Roman physician
Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus ( el, Κλαύδιος Γαληνός; September 129 – c. AD 216), often Anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. Considered to be o ...
in the second century AD, who declared that the brain was the source of mental activity, although this has also been accredited to Alcmaeon. However, Galen believed that personality and emotion were not generated by the brain, but rather by other organs. Andreas Vesalius, an anatomist and physician, was the first to believe that the brain and the nervous system are the center of the mind and emotion.
Psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
, a major contributing field to cognitive neuroscience, emerged from philosophical reasoning about the mind.


19th century


Phrenology

One of the predecessors to cognitive neuroscience was
phrenology Phrenology () is a pseudoscience which involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits.Wihe, J. V. (2002). "Science and Pseudoscience: A Primer in Critical Thinking." In ''Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience'', pp. 195–203. C ...
, a
pseudoscientific Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claim ...
approach that claimed that behavior could be determined by the shape of the scalp. In the early 19th century,
Franz Joseph Gall Franz Josef Gall (; 9 March 175822 August 1828) was a German neuroanatomist, physiologist, and pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain. Claimed as the founder of the pseudoscience of phrenology, Gall was an ...
and J. G. Spurzheim believed that the human brain was localized into approximately 35 different sections. In his book, The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular, Gall claimed that a larger bump in one of these areas meant that that area of the brain was used more frequently by that person. This theory gained significant public attention, leading to the publication of phrenology journals and the creation of phrenometers, which measured the bumps on a human subject's head. While phrenology remained a fixture at fairs and carnivals, it did not enjoy wide acceptance within the scientific community. The major criticism of phrenology is that researchers were not able to test theories empirically.


Localizationist view

The localizationist view was concerned with mental abilities being localized to specific areas of the brain rather than on what the characteristics of the abilities were and how to measure them. Studies performed in Europe, such as those of
John Hughlings Jackson John Hughlings Jackson, FRS (4 April 1835 – 7 October 1911) was an English neurologist. He is best known for his research on epilepsy. Biography He was born at Providence Green, Green Hammerton, near Harrogate, Yorkshire, the youngest s ...
, supported this view. Jackson studied patients with
brain damage Neurotrauma, brain damage or brain injury (BI) is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors. In general, brain damage refers to significant, undiscriminating t ...
, particularly those with
epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrica ...
. He discovered that the epileptic patients often made the same
clonic Clonus is a set of involuntary and rhythmic muscular contractions and relaxations. Clonus is a sign of certain neurological conditions, particularly associated with upper motor neuron lesions involving descending motor pathways, and in many ca ...
and tonic movements of muscle during their seizures, leading Jackson to believe that they must be caused be activity in the same place in the brain every time. Jackson proposed that specific functions were localized to specific areas of the brain, which was critical to future understanding of the brain lobes.


Aggregate field view

According to the aggregate field view, all areas of the brain participate in every mental function.
Pierre Flourens Marie Jean Pierre Flourens (13 April 1794 – 6 December 1867), father of Gustave Flourens, was a French physiologist, the founder of experimental brain science, and a pioneer in anesthesia. Biography Flourens was born at Maureilhan, near Bézie ...
, a French experimental psychologist, challenged the localizationist view by using animal experiments. He discovered that removing the
cerebellum The cerebellum (Latin for "little brain") is a major feature of the hindbrain of all vertebrates. Although usually smaller than the cerebrum, in some animals such as the mormyrid fishes it may be as large as or even larger. In humans, the cerebe ...
(brain) in rabbits and pigeons affected their sense of muscular coordination, and that all cognitive functions were disrupted in pigeons when the
cerebral hemisphere The vertebrate cerebrum ( brain) is formed by two cerebral hemispheres that are separated by a groove, the longitudinal fissure. The brain can thus be described as being divided into left and right cerebral hemispheres. Each of these hemisphere ...
s were removed. From this he concluded that the
cerebral cortex The cerebral cortex, also known as the cerebral mantle, is the outer layer of neural tissue of the cerebrum of the brain in humans and other mammals. The cerebral cortex mostly consists of the six-layered neocortex, with just 10% consisting o ...
,
cerebellum The cerebellum (Latin for "little brain") is a major feature of the hindbrain of all vertebrates. Although usually smaller than the cerebrum, in some animals such as the mormyrid fishes it may be as large as or even larger. In humans, the cerebe ...
, and
brainstem The brainstem (or brain stem) is the posterior stalk-like part of the brain that connects the cerebrum with the spinal cord. In the human brain the brainstem is composed of the midbrain, the pons, and the medulla oblongata. The midbrain is ...
functioned together as a whole.Boring, E.G. (1957). A history of experimental psychology. New York. His approach has been criticised on the basis that the tests were not sensitive enough to notice selective deficits had they been present.


Emergence of neuropsychology

Perhaps the first serious attempts to localize mental functions to specific locations in the brain was by Broca and Wernicke. This was mostly achieved by studying the effects of injuries to different parts of the brain on psychological functions. In 1861, French neurologist Paul Broca came across a man with a disability who was able to understand the language but unable to speak. The man could only produce the sound "tan". It was later discovered that the man had damage to an area of his left frontal lobe now known as
Broca's area Broca's area, or the Broca area (, also , ), is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left, of the brain with functions linked to speech production. Language processing has been linked to Broca's area since Pier ...
. Carl Wernicke, a
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
neurologist, found a patient who could speak fluently but non-sensibly. The patient had been the victim of a
stroke A stroke is a disease, medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemorr ...
, and could not understand spoken or written language. This patient had a lesion in the area where the left parietal and temporal lobes meet, now known as
Wernicke's area Wernicke's area (; ), also called Wernicke's speech area, is one of the two parts of the cerebral cortex that are linked to speech, the other being Broca's area. It is involved in the comprehension of written and spoken language, in contrast to B ...
. These cases, which suggested that lesions caused specific behavioral changes, strongly supported the localizationist view. Additionally, Aphasia is a learning disorder which was also discovered by Paul Broca. According to, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Aphasia is a language disorder caused by damage in a specific area of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension. This can often lead to the person speaking words with no sense known as "word salad"


Mapping the brain

In 1870, German physicians Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Fritsch published their findings of the behavior of animals. Hitzig and Fritsch ran an electric current through the cerebral cortex of a dog, causing different muscles to contract depending on which areas of the brain were electrically stimulated. This led to the proposition that individual functions are localized to specific areas of the brain rather than the cerebrum as a whole, as the aggregate field view suggests. Brodmann was also an important figure in brain mapping; his experiments based on Franz Nissl's tissue staining techniques divided the brain into fifty-two areas.


20th century


Cognitive revolution

At the start of the 20th century, attitudes in America were characterized by pragmatism, which led to a preference for
behaviorism Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual ...
as the primary approach in
psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
. J.B. Watson was a key figure with his stimulus-response approach. By conducting experiments on animals he was aiming to be able to predict and control behavior. Behaviorism eventually failed because it could not provide realistic psychology of human action and thought – it focused primarily on stimulus-response associations at the expense of explaining phenomena like thought and imagination. This led to what is often termed as the "cognitive revolution".


Neuron doctrine

In the early 20th century, Santiago Ramón y Cajal and Camillo Golgi began working on the structure of the neuron. Golgi developed a silver staining method that could entirely stain several cells in a particular area, leading him to believe that neurons were directly connected with each other in one cytoplasm. Cajal challenged this view after staining areas of the brain that had less myelin and discovering that neurons were discrete cells. Cajal also discovered that cells transmit electrical signals down the neuron in one direction only. Both Golgi and Cajal were awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1906 for this work on the neuron doctrine.


Mid-late 20th century

Several findings in the 20th century continued to advance the field, such as the discovery of ocular dominance columns, recording of single nerve cells in animals, and coordination of eye and head movements. Experimental psychology was also significant in the foundation of cognitive neuroscience. Some particularly important results were the demonstration that some tasks are accomplished via discrete processing stages, the study of attention, and the notion that behavioural data do not provide enough information by themselves to explain mental processes. As a result, some experimental psychologists began to investigate neural bases of behaviour. Wilder Penfield created maps of primary sensory and motor areas of the brain by stimulating the cortices of patients during surgery. The work of
Sperry Sperry may refer to: Places In the United States: * Sperry, Iowa, community in Des Moines County *Sperry, Missouri * Sperry, Oklahoma, town in Tulsa County *Sperry Chalet, historic backcountry chalet, Glacier National Park, Montana *Sperry Glacier ...
and
Gazzaniga Gazzaniga (Bergamasque: or ) is a '' comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Bergamo in the Italian region of Lombardy, located about northeast of Milan and northeast of Bergamo. Gazzaniga borders the following municipalities: Albino, Avia ...
on split brain patients in the 1950s was also instrumental in the progress of the field. The term cognitive neuroscience itself was coined by Gazzaniga and cognitive psychologist
George Armitage Miller George Armitage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology, and more broadly, of cognitive science. He also contributed to the birth of psycholinguistics. Mille ...
while sharing a taxi in 1976.


Brain mapping

New brain mapping technology, particularly
fMRI Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area ...
and
PET A pet, or companion animal, is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or a laboratory animal. Popular pets are often considered to have attractive appearances, intelligence ...
, allowed researchers to investigate experimental strategies of
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
by observing brain function. Although this is often thought of as a new method (most of the technology is relatively recent), the underlying principle goes back as far as 1878 when blood flow was first associated with brain function.
Angelo Mosso Angelo Mosso (30 May 1846 – 24 November 1910) is the 19th century Italian physiologist who invented the first neuroimaging technique ever, known as 'human circulation balance'. Mosso began by recording the pulsation of the human cortex in pati ...
, an Italian psychologist of the 19th century, had monitored the pulsations of the adult brain through neurosurgically created bony defects in the skulls of patients. He noted that when the subjects engaged in tasks such as mathematical calculations the pulsations of the brain increased locally. Such observations led Mosso to conclude that blood flow of the brain followed function.


Emergence of a new discipline


Birth of cognitive science

On September 11, 1956, a large-scale meeting of cognitivists took place at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...
. George A. Miller presented his "
The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology. It was written by the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Harvard University's D ...
" paper while
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
and Newell & Simon presented their findings on
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
. Ulric Neisser commented on many of the findings at this meeting in his 1967 book ''Cognitive Psychology''. The term "psychology" had been waning in the 1950s and 1960s, causing the field to be referred to as "cognitive science". Behaviorists such as Miller began to focus on the representation of language rather than general behavior. David Marr concluded that one should understand any cognitive process at three levels of analysis. These levels include computational, algorithmic/representational, and physical levels of analysis.


Combining neuroscience and cognitive science

Before the 1980s, interaction between neuroscience and cognitive science was scarce.not available

not available
Cognitive neuroscience began to integrate the newly laid theoretical ground in cognitive science, that emerged between the 1950s and 1960s, with approaches in experimental psychology, neuropsychology and neuroscience. (Neuroscience was not established as a unified discipline until 1971). In the very late 20th century new technologies evolved that are now the mainstay of the methodology of cognitive neuroscience, including Transcranial magnetic stimulation, TMS (1985) and
fMRI Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area ...
(1991). Earlier methods used in cognitive neuroscience include EEG (human EEG 1920) and
MEG Meg is a feminine given name, often a short form of Megatron, Megan, Megumi (Japanese), etc. It may refer to: People * Meg (singer), a Japanese singer *Meg Cabot (born 1967), American author of romantic and paranormal fiction * Meg Burton Cahill ...
(1968). Occasionally cognitive neuroscientists utilize other brain imaging methods such as
PET A pet, or companion animal, is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or a laboratory animal. Popular pets are often considered to have attractive appearances, intelligence ...
and
SPECT Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT, or less commonly, SPET) is a nuclear medicine tomographic imaging technique using gamma rays. It is very similar to conventional nuclear medicine planar imaging using a gamma camera (that is ...
. An upcoming technique in neuroscience is NIRS which uses light absorption to calculate changes in oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin in cortical areas. In some animals
Single-unit recording In neuroscience, single-unit recordings provide a method of measuring the electro-physiological responses of a single neuron using a microelectrode system. When a neuron generates an action potential, the signal propagates down the neuron as a cu ...
can be used. Other methods include microneurography, facial EMG, and
eye tracking Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research ...
.
Integrative neuroscience Integrative neuroscience is the study of neuroscience that works to unify functional organization data to better understand complex structures and behaviors. The relationship between structure and function, and how the regions and functions connec ...
attempts to consolidate data in databases, and form unified descriptive models from various fields and scales: biology, psychology, anatomy, and clinical practice. Adaptive resonance theory (ART) is a cognitive neuroscience theory developed by Gail Carpenter and Stephen Grossberg in the late 1970s on aspects of how the brain processes information. It describes a number of neural network models which use supervised and unsupervised learning methods, and address problems such as
pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphics ...
and prediction.Carpenter, G.A., Grossberg, S., & Reynolds, J.H. (1991)
ARTMAP: Supervised real-time learning and classification of nonstationary data by a self-organizing neural network
, ''
Neural Networks A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...
'', 4, 565-588
In 2014,
Stanislas Dehaene Stanislas Dehaene (born May 12, 1965) is a French author and cognitive neuroscientist whose research centers on a number of topics, including numerical cognition, the neural basis of reading and the neural correlates of consciousness. As of 20 ...
,
Giacomo Rizzolatti Giacomo Rizzolatti (born 28 April 1937) is an Italian neurophysiologist who works at the University of Parma. Born in Kyiv, UkSSR, he is the Senior Scientist of the research team that discovered mirror neurons in the frontal and parietal cortex ...
and
Trevor Robbins Trevor William Robbins CBE FRS FMedSci is a Professor of cognitive neuroscience and former Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. Robbins interests are in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, behavioural neuro ...
, were awarded the
Brain Prize The Brain Prize, formerly known as The Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize, is an international scientific award honouring "one or more scientists who have distinguished themselves by an outstanding contribution to neuroscience and who are ...
"for their pioneering research on higher brain mechanisms underpinning such complex human functions as literacy, numeracy, motivated behaviour and social cognition, and for their efforts to understand cognitive and behavioural disorders". Brenda Milner,
Marcus Raichle Marcus E. Raichle (born March 15, 1937) is an American neurologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, Missouri. He is a professor in the Department of Radiology with joint appointments in Neurology, Neurobiology and B ...
and John O'Keefe received the
Kavli Prize The Kavli Prize was established in 2005 as a joint venture of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and the Kavli Foundation. It honors, supports, and recognizes scientists for outstan ...
in Neuroscience "for the discovery of specialized brain networks for memory and cognition" and O'Keefe shared the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accordi ...
in the same year with
May-Britt Moser May-Britt Moser (born 4 January 1963) is a Norwegian psychologist and neuroscientist, who is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She and her then-husband, Edvard Moser, shar ...
and
Edvard Moser Edvard Ingjald Moser (; born 27 April 1962) is a Norwegian professor of psychology and neuroscience at thKavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. In 2005, he and May-Brit ...
"for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain". In 2017, Wolfram Schultz,
Peter Dayan Peter Dayan is director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany. He is co-author of ''Theoretical Neuroscience'', an influential textbook on computational neuroscience. He is known for applying Bayesian metho ...
and Ray Dolan were awarded the Brain Prize "for their multidisciplinary analysis of brain mechanisms that link learning to reward, which has far-reaching implications for the understanding of human behaviour, including disorders of decision-making in conditions such as gambling, drug addiction, compulsive behaviour and schizophrenia".,


Recent trends

Recently the focus of research had expanded from the localization of brain area(s) for specific functions in the adult brain using a single technology. Studies have been diverging in several different directions: exploring the interactions between different brain areas, using multiple technologies and approaches to understand brain functions, and using computational approaches. Advances in non-invasive functional neuroimaging and associated data analysis methods have also made it possible to use highly naturalistic stimuli and tasks such as feature films depicting social interactions in cognitive neuroscience studies. Another very recent trend in cognitive neuroscience is the use of optogenetics to explore circuit function and its behavioral consequences.


Topics

*
Attention Attention is the behavioral and cognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether considered subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. William James (1890) wrote that "Att ...
*
Consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
*
Decision-making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either ra ...
*
Emotions Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
*
Intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can ...
*
Language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
*
Learning Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of lea ...
*
Memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remember ...
*
Perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...
* Social cognition


Methods

Experimental methods include: *
Psychophysics Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, ...
*
Eye-tracking Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research ...
*
Functional magnetic resonance imaging Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...
*
Electroencephalography Electroencephalography (EEG) is a method to record an electrogram of the spontaneous electrical activity of the brain. The biosignals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in the neocorte ...
* Magnetoencephalography *
Electrocorticography Electrocorticography (ECoG), or intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG), is a type of electrophysiological monitoring that uses electrodes placed directly on the exposed surface of the brain to record electrical activity from the cerebral co ...
*
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive form of brain stimulation in which a changing magnetic field is used to induce an electric current at a specific area of the brain through electromagnetic induction. An electric pulse gener ...
*
Computational Modeling Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be dete ...


See also

* Cognitive biology *
Cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
*
Embodied cognition Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cognit ...
*
Experimental psychology Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...
* Cognitive psychophysiology * Affective neuroscience * Social neuroscience * Social cognitive neuroscience * Cultural neuroscience * List of cognitive neuroscientists *
Neurochemistry Neurochemistry is the study of chemicals, including neurotransmitters and other molecules such as psychopharmaceuticals and neuropeptides, that control and influence the physiology of the nervous system. This particular field within neuroscienc ...
*
Neuroethology Neuroethology is the evolutionary and comparative approach to the study of animal behavior and its underlying mechanistic control by the nervous system. It is an interdisciplinary science that combines both neuroscience (study of the nervous syste ...
* Neuroendocrinology *
Neuroscience Neuroscience is the science, scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a Multidisciplinary approach, multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, an ...


References


Further reading

* * * * *Enersen, O. D. (2009). ''John Hughlings Jackson.'' In: Who Named It. http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/2766.html Retrieved 14 August 2009 * Gazzaniga, M. S., Ivry, R. B. & Mangun, G. R. (2002). ''Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind'' (2nd ed.). New York: W.W.Norton. *Gallistel, R. (2009). "Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science will Transform Neuroscience."
Wiley-Blackwell Wiley-Blackwell is an international scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons. It was formed by the merger of John Wiley & Sons Global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business with Blackwell Publish ...
. * Gazzaniga, M. S., ''The Cognitive Neurosciences III'', (2004), The MIT Press, * Gazzaniga, M. S., Ed. (1999). ''Conversations in the Cognitive Neurosciences'', The MIT Press, . *Sternberg, Eliezer J. ''Are You a Machine? The Brain, the Mind and What it Means to be Human.'' Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. *
Handbook of Functional Neuroimaging of Cognition By Roberto Cabeza, Alan KingstonePrinciples of neural science By Eric R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz, Thomas M. JessellThe Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory By Amanda Parker, Edward L. Wilding, Timothy J. BusseyNeuronal Theories of the Brain By Christof Koch, Joel L. DavisCambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning By Keith James Holyoak, Robert G. MorrisonHandbook of Mathematical Cognition By Jamie I. D. CampbellCognitive Psychology By Michael W. Eysenck, Mark T. KeaneDevelopment of Intelligence By Mike AndersonDevelopment of Mental Processing By Andreas Demetriou, et al.Memory and Thinking By Robert H. Logie, K. J. GilhoolyMemory Capacity By Nelson CowanProceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive ScienceModels of Working Memory By Akira Miyake, Priti ShahMemory and Thinking By Robert H. Logie, K. J. GilhoolyVariation in Working Memory By Andrew R. A. Conway, et al.Memory Capacity By Nelson CowanCognition and Intelligence By Robert J. Sternberg, Jean E. PretzGeneral Factor of Intelligence By Robert J. Sternberg, Elena GrigorenkoNeurological Basis of Learning, Development and Discovery By Anton E. LawsonMemory and Human Cognition By John T. E. Richardson
*Society for Neuroscience. https://web.archive.org/web/20090805111859/http://www.sfn.org/index.cfm?pagename=about_SfN#timeline Retrieved 14 August 2009 *
Keiji Tanaka is a retired Japanese figure skater. He is the 2016 NHK Trophy bronze medalist, 2019 U.S. Classic champion, 2017 Winter Universiade silver medalist, 2011 World Junior silver medalist, and a two-time Japanese national silver medalist (2016, 2 ...
,"Current Opinion in Neurobiology", (2007)


External links


Cognitive Neuroscience Society Homepage



What Is Cognitive Neuroscience?, Jamie Ward/Psychology Press

goCognitive - Educational Tools for Cognitive Neuroscience (including video interviews)

CogNet, The Brain and Cognitive Sciences Community Online, MIT

Cognitive Neuroscience Arena, Psychology Press

Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, CUJCS, Spring 2002



Cognitive Neuroscience Discussion Group

John Jonides, a big role in Cognitive Neurosciences by Beebrite

Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience

AgliotiLAB - Social and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory founded in 2003 in Rome, Italy
Related Wikibooks * Wikibook on cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience * Wikibook on consciousness studies * Cognitive Neuroscience chapter of the Wikibook on neuroscience
Computational Cognitive Neuroscience wikibook
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