Concept
Cognitive neuroscience
Overview
Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain that 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 and psychology, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology, and affective neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neurobiology, and computational modeling.
Parts of the brain play an important role in this field. Neurons 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.
Methods employed in cognitive neuroscience include experimental procedures from psychophysics and cognitive psychology, functional neuroimaging, electrophysiology, cognitive genomics, and behavioral genetics.
Studies of patients with cognitive deficits due to brain lesions constitute an important aspect of cognitive neuroscience. The damage in lesioned brains provide a comparable starting point with regard 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 or learning. These 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 involve damage to Wernicke's area, the left side of the temporal lobe, and Broca'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 proposing possible reasons for those differences.
Theoretical approaches include computational neuroscience and cognitive psychology.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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In all animals the brain is without blood, nor does it contain any veins, and it is naturally cold to the touch. The greater number of animals have a small cavity in the centre of the brain. And round this a membrane filled with veins: this membrane is like skin, and encloses the brain. Above the brain is the smoothest and weakest bone in the head--it is called sinciput.
Aristotle, Aristotle's History of Animals In Ten Books
States what Cognitive neuroscience is; the author is tied to Cognitive neuroscience in the knowledge graph.
Purgatives of a weaker sort are called salt and, having no bitterness, are rather agreeable. Inflammatory bodies, which by their lightness are carried up into the head, cutting all that comes in their way, are termed pungent. But when these are refined by putrefaction, and enter the narrow veins of the tongue, and meet there particles of earth and air, two kinds of globules are formed—one of earthy and impure…
Plato, Timaeus
States what Cognitive neuroscience is; the author is tied to Cognitive neuroscience in the knowledge graph.
But now, in laughing at us, you will be laughing at yourselves: for you also admitted that men err in their choice of pleasures and pains; that is, in their choice of good and evil, from defect of knowledge; and you admitted further, that they err, not only from defect of knowledge in general, but of that particular knowledge which is called measuring. And you are also aware that the erring act which is done without…
Plato, Protagoras
States what Cognitive neuroscience is; the author is tied to Cognitive neuroscience in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Cognitive neuroscience
Related ideas
- Epilepsy
- Cognition
- Galen
- Herbert A. Simon
- Creativity
- Learning
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Mathematical model
- Neuroscience
- Alcmaeon of Croton
- Noam Chomsky
- Cognitive revolution
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging
- Psychology
- Plato
- Perception
- Allen Newell
- Brain injury
- Aristotle
- Memory
- Phineas Gage
- Broca's area
- Computer science
- Behaviorism
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Embodied cognition.