Cognitive neuroscience
Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition,[1] 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 and psychology, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology and affective neuroscience.[2] Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neurobiology, and computational modeling.[2]
For the academic journal, see Cognitive Neuroscience.
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 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 or learning. 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 Broca's area close to the frontal lobe.[3]
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 and cognitive psychology.
Emergence of a new discipline[edit]
Birth of cognitive science[edit]
On September 11, 1956, a large-scale meeting of cognitivists took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. George A. Miller presented his "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" paper[23] while Noam Chomsky and Newell & Simon presented their findings on computer 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.[24]
Combining neuroscience and cognitive science[edit]
Before the 1980s, interaction between neuroscience and cognitive science was scarce.[25] 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[26]). In the late 1970s, neuroscientist Michael S. Gazzaniga and cognitive psychologist George A. Miller were said to have first coined the term "cognitive neuroscience."[27] 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 (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 and SPECT. 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. Integrative neuroscience attempts to consolidate data in databases, and form unified descriptive models from various fields and scales: biology, psychology, anatomy, and clinical practice.[28]
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 models which use supervised and unsupervised learning methods, and address problems such as pattern recognition and prediction.[29]
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".[30] Brenda Milner, Marcus Raichle and John O'Keefe received the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience "for the discovery of specialized brain networks for memory and cognition"[31] and O'Keefe shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in the same year with May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain".[32]
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".,[33]
Recent trends[edit]
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.[34] 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.[35]
Another very recent trend in cognitive neuroscience is the use of optogenetics to explore circuit function and its behavioral consequences.[36]
Experimental methods include:
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