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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 and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of ...
processes and aspects that underlie
cognition Cognition is 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, thought, ...
, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in
mental process Cognition is 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, thought, i ...
es. 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 scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...
and
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
, overlapping with disciplines such as
behavioral neuroscience Behavioral neuroscience, also known as biological psychology, biopsychology, or psychobiology,Psychobi ...
,
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human 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, whi ...
,
physiological psychology Physiological psychology is a subdivision of behavioral neuroscience (biological psychology) that studies the neural mechanisms of perception and behavior through direct manipulation of the brains of nonhuman animal subjects in controlled experime ...
and affective neuroscience.Gazzaniga 2002, p. xv Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in
cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...
coupled with evidence from
neurobiology Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...
, and computational modeling. Parts of the brain play an important role in this field.
Neuron A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...
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. It is the largest site of Neuron, neural integration in the central nervous system, and plays ...
. Methods employed in cognitive neuroscience include experimental procedures from
psychophysics Psychophysics is the field of psychology which quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimulus (physiology), stimuli and the sensation (psychology), sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described ...
and
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human 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, whi ...
,
functional neuroimaging Functional neuroimaging is the use of neuroimaging technology to measure an aspect of brain function, often with a view to understanding the relationship between activity in certain brain areas and specific mental functions. It is primarily used a ...
,
electrophysiology Electrophysiology (from ee the Electron#Etymology, etymology of "electron" ; and ) is the branch of physiology that studies the electrical properties of biological cell (biology), cells and tissues. It involves measurements of voltage change ...
, cognitive genomics, and
behavioral genetics Behavioural genetics, also referred to as behaviour genetics, is a field of scientific research that uses genetic methods to investigate the nature and origins of individual differences in behaviour. While the name "behavioural genetics" c ...
. 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 injury or diseases. The term ''Lesion'' is derived from the Latin meaning "injury". Lesions may occur in both plants and animals. Types There is no de ...
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 remembe ...
or
learning Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, value (personal and cultural), values, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, non-human animals, and ...
. 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 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 ...
, the left side of the
temporal lobe The temporal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain. The temporal lobe is involved in pr ...
, and
Broca's area Broca's area, or the Broca area (, also , ), is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant Cerebral hemisphere, hemisphere, usually the left, of the Human brain, brain with functions linked to speech production. Language processing in the brai ...
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 mathematics, computer science, theoretical analysis and abstractions of the brain to understand th ...
and
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human 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, whi ...
.


Historical origins

Cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary area of study that has emerged from
neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...
and
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
. 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, r ...
(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 focus on how injuries or illnesses of the brai ...
, 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, from which emerged a new field known as cognitive science. The preexisting relevant fields were psychology, ...
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. While the Ancient Greeks Alcmaeon,
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
,
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and then the Roman physician
Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...
in the 2nd century AD already argued that the brain is the source of mental activity, scientific research into the connections between brain areas and cognitive functions began in the second half of the 19th century. The founding insights in the Cognitive neuroscience establishment were: * In 1861, French neurologist
Paul Broca Pierre Paul Broca (, also , , ; 28 June 1824 – 9 July 1880) was a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist. He is best known for his research on Broca's area, a region of the frontal lobe that is named after him. Broca's area is involve ...
discovered that a damaged area of the posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pars triangularis, BA45, also known as
Broca's area Broca's area, or the Broca area (, also , ), is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant Cerebral hemisphere, hemisphere, usually the left, of the Human brain, brain with functions linked to speech production. Language processing in the brai ...
) in patients caused an inability to speak. His work "Localization of Speech in the Third Left Frontal Cultivation" in 1865 inspired others to study brain regions linking them to sensory and motor functions. * In 1870, German physicians
Eduard Hitzig Eduard Hitzig (6 February 1838 – 20 August 1907) was a German neurologist and neuropsychiatrist of Jewish ancestryAndrew P. Wickens, ''A History of the Brain: From Stone Age Surgery to Modern Neuroscience'', Psychology Press (2014), p. 226 ...
and
Gustav Fritsch Gustav Theodor Fritsch (5 March 1838 – 12 June 1927) was a German anatomist, anthropologist, traveller and physiologist from Cottbus. Fritsch studied natural science and medicine in Berlin, Breslau and Heidelberg. In 1874 he became an asso ...
stimulated the cerebral cortex of a dog with electricity, causing different muscles to contract depending on the areas of the brain involved. This led to the suggestion that individual functions are localized to specific areas of the brain. * Italian neuroanatomist professor
Camillo Golgi Camillo Golgi (; 7 July 184321 January 1926) was an Italian biologist and pathologist known for his works on the central nervous system. He studied medicine at the University of Pavia (where he later spent most of his professional career) bet ...
discovered in the 1870s that nerve cells could be colored using silver nitrate allowing Golgi to argue that all the nerve cells in the nervous system are a continuous, interconnected network. * In 1874, German neurologist and psychiatrist
Carl Wernicke Carl (or Karl) Wernicke (; ; 15 May 1848 – 15 June 1905) was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also ...
hypothesized an association between the left posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus and the reflexive mimicking of words and their syllables. * In 1878, Italian professor of pharmacology and physiology Angelo Mosso associated blood flow with brain functions. He invented the first neuroimaging technique, known as 'human circulation balance'. Angelo Mosso is a forerunner of more refined techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET). * In 1887, Spanish neuroanatomist professor Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) improved the Golgi's method of visualizing nervous tissue under light microscopy by using a technique he termed "double impregnation". He discovered a number of facts about the organization of the nervous system: the nerve cell as an independent cell, insights into degeneration and regeneration, and ideas on brain plasticity. * In 1894, neurologist and psychiatrist Edward Flatau published a human brain atlas “Atlas of the Human Brain and the Course of the Nerve-Fibres” which consisted of long-exposure photographs of fresh brain sections. It contained an overview of the knowledge of the time on the fibre pathways in the central nervous system. * In 1909, German anatomist Korbinian Brodmann published his original research on brain mapping in the monograph Vergleichende Lokalisationslehre der Großhirnrinde (Localisation in the cerebral cortex), defining 52 distinct regions of the cerebral cortex, known as
Brodmann areas A Brodmann area is a region of the cerebral cortex, in the human or other primate brain, defined by its cytoarchitecture, or histological structure and organization of cells. The concept was first introduced by the German anatomist Korbinian B ...
now, based on regional variations in structure. These Brodmann areas were associated with diverse functions including sensation, motor control, and cognition. * In 1924, German physiologist and psychiatrist
Hans Berger Hans Berger (21 May 1873 – 1 June 1941) was a German psychiatrist. He is best known as the inventor of electroencephalography (EEG) in 1924, which is a method used for recording the electrical activity of the brain, commonly described in terms ...
(1873–1941) recorded the first human electroencephalogram EEG, discovering the electrical activity of the brain (called brain waves) and, in particular, the alpha wave rhythm, which is a type of brain wave. * A first clinical positron imaging device, a prototype of a modern
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, r ...
(PET), was invented in 1953 by Dr. Brownell and Dr. Aronow. American scientists specializing in nuclear medicine David Edmund Kuhl, Luke Chapman and Roy Edwards developed this new method of tomographic imaging and constructed several tomographic instruments in the late 1950s. Ph.D. in Chemistry Michael E. Phelps was able to invent their insights into the first PET scanner in 1973. PET became a valuable research tool to study brain functioning. This technique can indirectly measure radioactivity signal that indicates increased blood flow associated with increased brain activity. * In 1971, American chemist and physicist Paul Christian Lauterbur invented the idea of MR imaging (
MRI Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to generate pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes inside the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and rad ...
). In 2003, he received the Nobel Prize. MRI is the investigative tool for contrasting grey and white matter, which makes MRI the choice to study many conditions of the central nervous system. This method contributed to the development of
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), which has been used in many studies in cognitive neuroscience since 1990s.


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 (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
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 (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one 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 Andries van Wezel (31 December 1514 – 15 October 1564), latinized as Andreas Vesalius (), was an anatomist and physician who wrote '' De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem'' (''On the fabric of the human body'' ''in seven books''), which is ...
, 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 scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
, 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 that involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits. It is based on the concept that the Human brain, brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific ...
, 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 cl ...
approach that claimed that behavior could be determined by the shape of the
scalp The scalp is the area of the head where head hair grows. It is made up of skin, layers of connective and fibrous tissues, and the membrane of the skull. Anatomically, the scalp is part of the epicranium, a collection of structures covering th ...
. In the early 19th century, Franz Joseph Gall 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, supported this view. Jackson studied patients with
brain damage 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 trauma-induced damage. A common ...
, particularly those with
epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of Non-communicable disease, non-communicable Neurological disorder, neurological disorders characterized by a tendency for recurrent, unprovoked Seizure, seizures. A seizure is a sudden burst of abnormal electrical activit ...
. 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 cas ...
and tonic movements of muscle during their seizures, leading Jackson to believe that they must be caused by 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, a French experimental psychologist, challenged the localizationist view by using animal experiments. He discovered that removing the
cerebellum The cerebellum (: cerebella or cerebellums; 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 it or eve ...
(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 hemispheres ...
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. It is the largest site of Neuron, neural integration in the central nervous system, and plays ...
,
cerebellum The cerebellum (: cerebella or cerebellums; 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 it or eve ...
, 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 conti ...
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 Cerebral hemisphere, hemisphere, usually the left, of the Human brain, brain with functions linked to speech production. Language processing in the brai ...
. Carl Wernicke, a German
neurologist Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous system, which comprises the brain, the ...
, found a patient who could speak fluently but non-sensibly. The patient had been the victim of a
stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...
, 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 ...
. 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 Eduard Hitzig (6 February 1838 – 20 August 1907) was a German neurologist and neuropsychiatrist of Jewish ancestryAndrew P. Wickens, ''A History of the Brain: From Stone Age Surgery to Modern Neuroscience'', Psychology Press (2014), p. 226 ...
and
Gustav Fritsch Gustav Theodor Fritsch (5 March 1838 – 12 June 1927) was a German anatomist, anthropologist, traveller and physiologist from Cottbus. Fritsch studied natural science and medicine in Berlin, Breslau and Heidelberg. In 1874 he became an asso ...
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 understand the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex elicited by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that indivi ...
as the primary approach in
psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
. 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 and Gazzaniga 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. Miller ...
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 o ...
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/ cute appearances, inte ...
, allowed researchers to investigate experimental strategies of
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human 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, whi ...
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, 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. Commonly the cerebrum is divided into 5 sections: the frontal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobes, parietal lobe, and the insula. The brain is also divided into fissures and sulci. The lateral sulcus called the Sylvian Fissure separates the frontal and temporal lobes. The insula is described as being deep to this lateral fissure. The longitudinal fissure separates the lobes of the brain length-wise. Lobes are considered to be distinct in their distribution of vessels. The overall surface consists of sulci and gyri which are necessary to identify for neuroimaging purposes.


Notable experiments

Throughout the history of cognitive neuroscience, many notable experiments have been conducted. For example, the mental rotation experiment conducted by Kosslyn et al., 1993, indicated that the time it takes to mentally rotate an object via imagination takes the same amount of time as actually rotating it; they found that mentally rotating an object activates parts of the brain involved in motor functioning, which may explain this similarity. Another experiment is describes the two mechanisms of processing visual attention: bottom-up attention, and top-down attention. They define bottom-up attention is the brain visually processing salient images first, and then the surrounding information, while top-down attention involves focusing on task-relevant objects first. The researchers found that the ventral stream focuses on visual recognition, the dorsal stream is involved in the spatial information concerning the object. As experiments in cognitive neuroscience, what these have in common is that the researchers are measuring activities or behaviors that we can see, and then determining the neural basis of the function and what part of the brain is involved.


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 university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
. 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 ...
" paper while
Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...
and Newell & Simon presented their findings on
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...
. 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. 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 late 1970s, neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga and cognitive psychologist George A. Miller were said to have first coined the term "cognitive neuroscience." In the very late 20th century new technologies evolved that are now the mainstay of the methodology of cognitive neuroscience, including 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 o ...
(1991). Earlier methods used in cognitive neuroscience include EEG (human EEG 1920) and MEG (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/ cute appearances, inte ...
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 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 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
artificial neural network In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of connected ...
models which use supervised and
unsupervised learning Unsupervised learning is a framework in machine learning where, in contrast to supervised learning, algorithms learn patterns exclusively from unlabeled data. Other frameworks in the spectrum of supervisions include weak- or semi-supervision, wh ...
methods, and address problems such as
pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the task of assigning a class to an observation based on patterns extracted from data. While similar, pattern recognition (PR) is not to be confused with pattern machines (PM) which may possess PR capabilities but their p ...
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'', 4, 565-588
In 2014, Stanislas Dehaene, Giacomo Rizzolatti and Trevor Robbins, were awarded the Brain Prize "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 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 (United States), Kavli Foundation. It honors, supports, and r ...
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, acco ...
in the same year with May-Britt Moser and
Edvard Moser Edvard Ingjald Moser () is a Norwegian psychologist and neuroscientist, who is a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2014 with long-term col ...
"for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain". In 2017, Wolfram Schultz, Peter Dayan 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 Functional neuroimaging is the use of neuroimaging technology to measure an aspect of brain function, often with a view to understanding the relationship between activity in certain brain areas and specific mental functions. It is primarily used a ...
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. In recent years, there have been a lot of new advancements in the field of Cognitive Neuroscience. One new technique that has emerged is called shadow imaging. This method has combined different aspects of various neuroimaging techniques to create one that is more versatile. It uses standard light microscopy and melds it with fluorescence labeling of the interstitial fluid in the brain's extracellular space. This technique can help researchers get a bigger and more detailed look at brain tissue. This can help researchers understand more on anatomy and viability for their experiments. This technique has helped to see neurons, microglia, tumor cells and blood capillaries more closely. Shadow imaging is a new approach that shows a lot of promise in the field of neuroimaging. Another very recent trend in cognitive neuroscience is the use of
optogenetics Optogenetics is a biological technique to control the activity of neurons or other cell types with light. This is achieved by Gene expression, expression of Channelrhodopsin, light-sensitive ion channels, Halorhodopsin, pumps or Photoactivated ade ...
to explore circuit function and its behavioral consequences. This new technology is a combination of genetic targeting of certain neurons and using the imaging technology to see targets in living neurons. This technique allows scientists to see the neurons while they are still intact in animals and be able to trace the electrical happenings in that cell. This new technology has been used successfully in many experiments and it is helping researchers in observing brain activity and understanding its role in disease, behavior and function. Researchers have also modified a fMRI and made it more efficient, in a technique called  direct imaging of neuronal activity or DIANA. This group of researchers changed the software to collect data every 5 milliseconds, which is 8 times faster than what the normal technique captures. After, the software can stitch together all of the images taken during the imaging and create a full slice of the brain. In 2024, Prof. in bioengineering at RTU Liepaja Academy Igor Val Danilov introduced the natural neurostimulation hypothesis that explains the neuromodulation mechanism during pregnancy. Because the natural neurostimulation contributes to developing the healthy nervous system during pregnancy, artificial neurostimulation with the physical characteristics of a mother's care for her fetus scaled to the parameters of the specific patient can treat the injured nervous system. Basing on this insight, the novel APIN neurostimulation technique was introduced. The APIN technique exerts its neurotherapeutic effect by inducing mitochondrial stress and microvascular vasodilation of the specific neuronal circuits during an intensive cognitive load.


Cognitive Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence

Cognitive neuroscience has played a major role in shaping
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
(AI). By studying how the human brain processes information, researchers have developed AI systems that simulate cognitive functions like learning, pattern recognition, and decision-making. A good example of this is neural networks, which are inspired by the connections between neurons in the brain. These networks form the foundation of many AI applications. Deep learning, a subfield of AI, uses neural networks to replicate processes similar to those in the human brain. For instance, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are modeled after the visual system and have transformed tasks like image recognition and speech analysis. AI also benefits from advancements in brain imaging technologies, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). These tools provide valuable insights into neural activity, which help improve AI systems designed to mimic human thought processes. Despite the progress, replicating the complexity of human cognition remains a challenge. Researchers are now exploring hybrid models that combine neural networks with symbolic reasoning to better mimic how humans think and solve problems. This approach shows promise for addressing some of the limitations of current AI systems.


Cognitive Neuroscience and Neurotherapy

Cognitive neuroscience contributed to development of novel noninvasive
neurostimulation Neurostimulation is the purposeful modulation of the nervous system's activity using invasive (e.g. microelectrodes) or Non-invasive procedure, non-invasive means (e.g. transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcranial electric stimulation such as ...
methods and developed in parallel with
Neurotherapy Neurotherapy is medical treatment that implements systemic targeted delivery of an energy stimulus or chemical agents to a specific neurological zone in the body to alter neuronal activity and stimulate neuroplasticity in a way that develops (or b ...
aimed to address symptom control and cure several conditions in medical treatment.Chapin, T.J.; Russell-Chapin, L.A. (2013). "Neurotherapy and: Brain-based treatment for psychological and behavioral problems". ''Routledge''; 2013 Dec 4. Noninvasive neurotherapy have attracted significant attention from the scientific community since, these methods can be personalized and used in treatment independent of underlying conditions. Based on research in cognitive neuroscience, Neurostimulation techniques apply different innovations to exert an energy-based impact on the nervous system by using
electrical Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...
,
magnetic Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that occur through a magnetic field, which allows objects to attract or repel each other. Because both electric currents and magnetic moments of elementary particles give rise to a magnetic field, m ...
, and/or
electromagnetic energy In physics, and in particular as measured by radiometry, radiant energy is the energy of electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. As energy, its SI unit is the joule (J). The quantity of radiant energy may be calculated by integrating radia ...
to treat mental and physical health disorders in patients. Since Neurotherapy aims to heal without harm and implements systemic targeted delivery of an energy stimulus to a specific neurological zone in the body to alter neuronal activity and stimulate
neuroplasticity Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity or just plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through neurogenesis, growth and reorganization. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to reorganize and rewir ...
, the recent trend in the Cognitive neuroscience is the research of natural neurostimulation.


Topics

*
Attention Attention or focus, is the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. It is the selective concentration on discrete information, either subjectively or objectively. William James (1890) wrote that "Atte ...
*
Cognitive development Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult bra ...
*
Consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...
*
Creativity Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable Idea, ideas or works using one's imagination. Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g. an idea, scientific theory, Literature, literary work, musical composition, or joke), or a physica ...
*
Decision-making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the Cognition, cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be ...
*
Emotions Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavior, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is ...
*
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. It can be described as t ...
*
Language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
*
Learning Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, value (personal and cultural), values, Attitude (psychology), attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, non-human animals, and ...
*
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 remembe ...
*
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 * Mind Wandering


Methods

Experimental methods include: *
Psychophysics Psychophysics is the field of psychology which quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimulus (physiology), stimuli and the sensation (psychology), sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described ...
* Eye-tracking *
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 biosignal, bio signals detected by EEG have been shown to represent the postsynaptic potentials of pyramidal neurons in ...
*
Magnetoencephalography Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a functional neuroimaging technique for mapping brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by electric current, electrical currents occurring naturally in the human brain, brain, using very sensitive magn ...
*
Electrocorticography Electrocorticography (ECoG), a type of 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 cer ...
*
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive neurostimulation technique in which a changing magnetic field is used to induce an electric current in a targeted area of the brain through electromagnetic induction. A device called a st ...
* Computational Modeling


Notable people

* Jesper Mogensen, Danish neuroscientist and former university professor


See also

*
Binding problem The unity of consciousness and (cognitive) binding problem is the problem of how objects, background, and abstract or emotional features are combined into a single experience. The binding problem refers to the overall encoding of our brain circuit ...
* Cognitive biology *
Cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human 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, whi ...
*
Embodied cognition Embodied cognition represents a diverse group of theories which investigate how cognition is shaped by the bodily state and capacities of the organism. These embodied factors include the motor system, the perceptual system, bodily interactions wi ...
*
Experimental psychology Experimental psychology is the work done by those who apply Experiment, experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ Research participant, human participants and Animal testing, anim ...
* Cognitive psychophysiology * Affective neuroscience *
Social neuroscience Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the relationship between social experiences and biological systems. Humans are fundamentally a social species, and studies indicate that various social influences, includi ...
* Social cognitive neuroscience * Cultural neuroscience * List of cognitive neuroscientists * Neurochemistry *
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 s ...
*
Neuroendocrinology Neuroendocrinology is the branch of biology (specifically of physiology) which studies the interaction between the nervous system and the endocrine system; i.e. how the brain regulates the hormonal activity in the body. The nervous and endocrine ...
*
Neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...


References


Sources

* *


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 The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...
, * Gazzaniga, M. S., Ed. (1999). ''Conversations in the Cognitive Neurosciences'',
The MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...
, . *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,"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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