Cognitive neuroscience

For the academic journal, see Cognitive Neuroscience.

Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concernedwith the scientific study of biological substrates underly-ing cognition,[1] with a specific focus on the neural sub-strates of mental processes. It addresses the questionsof how psychological/cognitive functions are producedby neural circuits in the brain. Cognitive neuroscienceis a branch of both psychology and neuroscience, over-lapping with disciplines such as physiological psychol-ogy, cognitive psychology, and neuropsychology.[2] Cog-nitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive sci-ence coupled with evidence from neuropsychology, andcomputational modeling.[2]

Due to its multidisciplinary nature, cognitive neuro-scientists may have various backgrounds. Other thanthe associated disciplines just mentioned, cognitive neu-roscientists may have backgrounds in neurobiology,bioengineering, psychiatry, neurology, physics, computerscience, linguistics, philosophy, and mathematics.Methods employed in cognitive neuroscience include ex-perimental paradigms from psychophysics and cognitivepsychology, functional neuroimaging, electrophysiology,cognitive genomics, and behavioral genetics. Studies ofpatients with cognitive deficits due to brain lesions consti-tute an important aspect of cognitive neuroscience. The-oretical approaches include computational neuroscienceand cognitive psychology.Cognitive neuroscience can look at the effects of damageto the brain and subsequent changes in the thought pro-cesses due to changes in neural circuitry resulting fromthe ensued damage. Also, cognitive abilities based onbrain development is studied and examined under thesubfield of developmental cognitive neuroscience.

1 Historical origins

Cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary area ofstudy that has emerged from many other fields, per-haps most significantly neuroscience, psychology, andcomputer science.[3] There were several stages in thesedisciplines that changed the way researchers approachedtheir investigations and that led to the field becoming fullyestablished.Although the task of cognitive neuroscience is to describehow the brain creates the mind, historically it has pro-gressed by investigating how a certain area of the brain

Timeline showing major developments in science that led to theemergence of the field cognitive neuroscience.

supports a given mental faculty. However, early efforts tosubdivide the brain proved to be problematic. The phre-nologist movement failed to supply a scientific basis forits theories and has since been rejected. The aggregatefield view, meaning that all areas of the brain participatedin all behavior,[4] was also rejected as a result of brainmapping, which began with Hitzig and Fritsch’s experi-ments [5] and eventually developed through methods suchas positron emission tomography (PET) and functionalmagnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).[6] Gestalt theory,neuropsychology, and the cognitive revolution were ma-jor turning points in the creation of cognitive neuro-science as a field, bringing together ideas and techniquesthat enabled researchers to make more links between be-havior and its neural substrates.

1.1 Origins in philosophy

Philosophers have always been interested in the mind.For example, Aristotle thought the brain was the body’scooling system and the capacity for intelligence was lo-cated in the heart. It has been suggested that the first per-son to believe otherwise was the Roman physician Galenin the second century AD, who declared that the brainwas the source of mental activity [7] although this hasalso been accredited to Alcmaeon.[8] Psychology, a ma-jor contributing field to cognitive neuroscience, emergedfrom philosophical reasoning about the mind.[9]

1.2 19th century

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2 1 HISTORICAL ORIGINS

1.2.1 Phrenology

A page from the American Phrenological Journal

Main article: Phrenology

One of the predecessors to cognitive neuroscience wasphrenology, a pseudoscientific approach that claimed thatbehavior could be determined by the shape of the scalp.In the early 19th century, Franz Joseph Gall and J. G.Spurzheim believed that the human brain was localizedinto approximately 35 different sections. In his book, TheAnatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in Gen-eral, and of the Brain in Particular, Gall claimed that alarger bump in one of these areas meant that that areaof the brain was used more frequently by that person.This theory gained significant public attention, leading tothe publication of phrenology journals and the creationof phrenometers, which measured the bumps on a hu-man subject’s head. While phrenology remained a fixtureat fairs and carnivals, it did not enjoy wide acceptancewithin the scientific community.[10] The major criticismof phrenology is that researchers were not able to test the-ories empirically.[3]

1.2.2 Localizationist view

The localizationist view was concerned with mental abil-ities being localized to specific areas of the brain ratherthan on what the characteristics of the abilities were andhow to measure them.[3] Studies performed in Europe,

such as those of John Hughlings Jackson, supported thisview. Jackson studied patients with brain damage, partic-ularly those with epilepsy. He discovered that the epilep-tic patients often made the same clonic and tonic move-ments of muscle during their seizures, leading Jackson tobelieve that they must be occurring in the same place ev-ery time. Jackson proposed that specific functions werelocalized to specific areas of the brain,[11] which was crit-ical to future understanding of the brain lobes.

1.2.3 Aggregate field view

According to the aggregate field view, all areas of thebrain participate in every mental function.[4]

Pierre Flourens, a French experimental psycholo-gist, challenged the localizationist view by using an-imal experiments.[3] He discovered that removing thecerebellum in rabbits and pigeons affected their sense ofmuscular coordination, and that all cognitive functionswere disrupted in pigeons when the cerebral hemisphereswere removed. From this he concluded that the cerebralcortex, cerebellum, and brainstem functioned together asa whole.[12] His approach has been criticised on the basisthat the tests were not sensitive enough to notice selectivedeficits had they been present.[3]

1.2.4 Emergence of neuropsychology

Perhaps the first serious attempts to localize mental func-tions to specific locations in the brain was by Broca andWernicke. This was mostly achieved by studying the ef-fects of injuries to different parts of the brain on psy-chological functions.[13] In 1861, French neurologist PaulBroca came across a man who was able to understandlanguage but unable to speak. The man could only pro-duce the sound “tan”. It was later discovered that the manhad damage to an area of his left frontal lobe now knownas Broca’s area. Carl Wernicke, a German neurologist,found a patient who could speak fluently but non-sensibly.The patient had been the victim of a stroke, and could notunderstand spoken or written language. This patient hada lesion in the area where the left parietal and temporallobes meet, now known as Wernicke’s area. These cases,which suggested that lesions caused specific behavioralchanges, strongly supported the localizationist view.

1.2.5 Mapping the brain

In 1870, German physicians Eduard Hitzig and GustavFritsch published their findings about the behavior of an-imals. Hitzig and Fritsch ran an electric current throughthe cerebral cortex of a dog, causing different muscles tocontract depending on which areas of the brain were elec-trically stimulated. This led to the proposition that indi-vidual functions are localized to specific areas of the brainrather than the cerebrum as a whole, as the aggregate field

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view suggests.[5] Brodmann was also an important figurein brain mapping; his experiments based on Franz Nissl’stissue staining techniques divided the brain into fifty-twoareas.

1.3 20th century

1.3.1 Cognitive revolution

At the start of the 20th century, attitudes in America werecharacterised by pragmatism, which led to a preferencefor behaviorism as the primary approach in psychology.J.B. Watson was a key figure with his stimulus-responseapproach. By conducting experiments on animals he wasaiming to be able to predict and control behaviour. Be-haviourism eventually failed because it could not providerealistic psychology of human action and thought – it wastoo based in physical concepts to explain phenomena likememory and thought. This led to what is often termed asthe “cognitive revolution”.[14]

1.3.2 Neuron doctrine

Main article: Neuron doctrine

In the early 20th century, Santiago Ramón y Cajal andCamillo Golgi began working on the structure of the neu-ron. Golgi developed a silver staining method that couldentirely stain several cells in a particular area, leading himto believe that neurons were directly connected with eachother in one cytoplasm. Cajal challenged this view af-ter staining areas of the brain that had less myelin anddiscovering that neurons were discrete cells. Cajal alsodiscovered that cells transmit electrical signals down theneuron in one direction only. Both Golgi and Cajal wereawarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology orMedicine in 1906for this work on the neuron doctrine.[15]

1.4 Mid-late 20th century

Several findings in the 20th century continued to ad-vance the field, such as the discovery of ocular dominancecolumns, recording of single nerve cells in animals, andcoordination of eye and head movements. Experimentalpsychology was also significant in the foundation of cog-nitive neuroscience. Some particularly important resultswere the demonstration that some tasks are accomplishedvia discrete processing stages, the study of attention, andthe notion that behavioural data do not provide enough in-formation by themselves to explain mental processes. Asa result, some experimental psychologists began to inves-tigate neural bases of behaviour. Wilder Penfield builtup maps of primary sensory and motor areas of the brainby stimulating cortices of patients during surgery. Sperryand Gazzaniga’s work on split brain patients in the 1950swas also instrumental in the progress of the field.[7]

1.4.1 Brain mapping

New brain mapping technology, particularly fMRI andPET, allowed researchers to investigate experimentalstrategies of cognitive psychology by observing brainfunction. Although this is often thought of as a newmethod (most of the technology is relatively recent), theunderlying principle goes back as far as 1878 when bloodflow was first associated with brain function.[6] AngeloMosso, an Italian psychologist of the 19th century, hadmonitored the pulsations of the adult brain through neu-rosurgically created bony defects in the skulls of patients.He noted that when the subjects engaged in tasks such asmathematical calculations the pulsations of the brain in-creased locally. Such observations led Mosso to concludethat blood flow of the brain followed function.[6]

2 Emergence of a new discipline

2.1 Birth of cognitive science

On September 11, 1956, a large-scale meeting ofcognitivists took place at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology. George A. Miller presented his "The Mag-ical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" paper whileNoam Chomsky and Newell & Simon presented theirfindings on computer science. Ulric Neisser commentedon many of the findings at this meeting in his 1967 bookCognitive Psychology. The term “psychology” had beenwaning in the 1950s and 1960s, causing the field to bereferred to as “cognitive science”. Behaviorists suchas Miller began to focus on the representation of lan-guage rather than general behavior. David Marr con-cluded that one should understand any cognitive processat three levels of analysis. These levels include compu-tational, algorithmic/representational, and physical levelsof analysis.[16]

2.2 Combining neuroscience and cognitivescience

Before the 1980s, interaction between neuroscience andcognitive science was scarce.[17] The term 'cognitive neu-roscience' was coined by GeorgeMiller andMichael Gaz-zaniga toward the end of the 1970s.[17] Cognitive neu-roscience began to integrate the newly laid theoreticalground in cognitive science, that emerged between the1950s and 1960s, with approaches in experimental psy-chology, neuropsychology and neuroscience. (Neuro-science was not established as a unified discipline until1971[18]). In the very late 20th century new technolo-gies evolved that are now the mainstay of the method-ology of cognitive neuroscience, including TMS (1985)and fMRI (1991). Earlier methods used in cognitive neu-roscience includes EEG (human EEG 1920) and MEG(1968). Occasionally cognitive neuroscientists utilize

4 8 REFERENCES

other brain imaging methods such as PET and SPECT.An upcoming technique in neuroscience is NIRS whichuses light absorption to calculate changes in oxy- anddeoxyhemoglobin in cortical areas. In some animalsSingle-unit recording can be used. Other methods in-clude microneurography, facial EMG, and eye-tracking.Integrative neuroscience attempts to consolidate data indatabases, and form unified descriptive models from var-ious fields and scales: biology, psychology, anatomy, andclinical practice.[19] Brenda Milner, Marcus Raichle andJohn O'Keefe received the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience“for the discovery of specialized brain networks for mem-ory and cognition” in 2014[20] and O'Keefe shared theNobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in the same yearwith May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser “for their dis-coveries of cells that constitute a positioning system inthe brain”.[21]

3 Recent trends

Recently the foci of research have expanded from the lo-calization of brain area(s) for specific functions in theadult brain using a single technology, studies have beendiverging in several different directions [22] such as mon-itoring REM sleep via polygraphy, a machine that is ca-pable of recording the electrical activity of a sleepingbrain. Advances in non-invasive functional neuroimag-ing and associated data analysis methods have also madeit possible to use highly naturalistic stimuli and tasks suchas feature films depicting social interactions in cognitiveneuroscience studies.[23]

4 Topics• Attention

• Change blindness

• Consciousness

• Decision-making

• Learning

• Memory

• Language

• Mirror neurons

• Social cognition

• Emotions

5 Methods

Experimental methods of specific psychology fields in-clude:

• Psychophysics

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging

• Electroencephalography

• Electrocorticography

• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

• Computational Modeling

6 Related WikiBooks

• wikibooks:Cognitive Psychology and CognitiveNeuroscience

• Wikibook on consciousness

• Cognitive Neuroscience chapter of theNeuroscience WikiBook

• Computational Cognitive Neuroscience wikibook

7 See also

8 References[1] Gazzaniga, Ivry and Mangun 2002, cf. title

[2] Gazzaniga 2002, p. xv

[3] Kosslyn, S, M. & Andersen, R, A. (1992). Frontiers incognitive neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.

[4] Cordelia Erickson-Davis. “Neurofeedback Training forParkinsonian Tremor and Bradykinesia” (PDF). Retrieved2013-05-23.

[5] G. Fritsch, E. Hitzig, Electric excitability of thecerebrum (Über die elektrische Erregbarkeit desGrosshirns), Epilepsy & Behavior, Volume 15, Is-sue 2, June 2009, Pages 123-130, ISSN 1525-5050,10.1016/j.yebeh.2009.03.001.

[6] Marcus E. Raichle. (2009). A brief history of humanbrain mapping. Trends in Neurosciences. 32 (2) 118-126.

[7] Uttal, W, R. (2011). Mind and brain: A critical appraisalof cognitive neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

[8] Gross, C, G. (1995) Aristotle on the Brain. The Neuro-scientist(1) 4.

[9] Hatfield, G. (2002). Psychology, Philosophy, and Cogni-tive Science: Reflections on the History and Philosophyof Experimental Psychology. Mind and Language. 17(3)207-232.

[10] Bear et al. 2007, pp. 10-11

[11] Enersen, O. D. 2009

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[12] Boring, E.G. (1957). A history of experimental psychol-ogy. New York.

[13] Uttal, W, R. (2011). Mind and brain: A critical appraisalof cognitive neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Pres-sUttal, W, R. (2011). Mind and brain: A critical appraisalof cognitive neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

[14] Mandler, G. (2002) Origins of the cognitive (r)evolution.J. Hist. Behav. Sci. Fall 38(4)339-53.

[15] “The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1906”.

[16] jungminded.weebly.com/7/post/2013/01/approaches-in-cognitive-pscyhology.html

[17] not available, http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/brookmadik.com.pdf not available

[18] Society for Neuroscience. Date of the first meeting of theSociefy for Neuroscience

[19] https://www.boundless.com/psychology/history-psychology/origin-psychology/growth-of-psychology-as-a-science-$-$31/

[20] http://www.kavliprize.org/prizes-and-laureates/prizes/2014-kavli-prize-laureates-neuroscience

[21] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2014/

[22] Takeo, Watanabe. “Cognitive neuroscience Editorialoverview” (PDF).

[23] Hasson, Uri et al. “Intersubject Synchronization of Corti-cal Activity During Natural Vision”.

9 Further reading

• Bear, M. F., Connors, B. W. & Paradiso M.A.(2007). “Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain”(3rd ed.). pp. 10–11. Lippincott Williams &Wilkins, ISBN 0-7817-6003-8

• Churchland, P.S. & Sejnowski, T.J. (1992). TheComputational Brain, The MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-03188-4.

• Code, C. (1996). Classic Cases: Ancient & ModernMilestones in the Development of Neuropsychologi-cal Science. In: Code, C. et al. Classic Cases in Neu-ropsychology.

• 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 themind (2nd ed.). New York: W.W.Norton.

• Gazzaniga, M. S., The Cognitive Neurosciences III,(2004), The MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-07254-8

• Gazzaniga, M. S., Ed. (1999). Conversations in theCognitive Neurosciences, The MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-57117-X.

• Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven,plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity forprocessing information. Psychological Review, 63,81-97

• Sternberg, Eliezer J.Are You aMachine? The Brain,the Mind andWhat it Means to be Human. Amherst,NY: Prometheus Books.

• Ward, Jamie (2015). The Student’s Guide to Cog-nitive Neuroscience, 3rd Edition. Psychology Press.ISBN 978-1848722729.

• Handbook of Functional Neuroimaging of Cogni-tion By Roberto Cabeza, Alan Kingstone

• Principles of neural science By Eric R. Kandel,James H. Schwartz, Thomas M. Jessell

• The Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory ByAmanda Parker, Edward L. Wilding, Timothy J.Bussey

• Neuronal Theories of the Brain By Christof Koch,Joel L. Davis

• Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and ReasoningBy Keith James Holyoak, Robert G. Morrison

• Handbook of Mathematical Cognition By Jamie I.D. Campbell

• Cognitive Psychology By Michael W. Eysenck,Mark T. Keane

• Development of Intelligence By Mike Anderson

• Development of Mental Processing By AndreasDemetriou, et. al.

• Memory and Thinking By Robert H. Logie, K. J.Gilhooly

• Memory Capacity By Nelson Cowan

• Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Conferenceof the Cognitive Science

• Models ofWorkingMemory ByAkiraMiyake, PritiShah

• Memory and Thinking By Robert H. Logie, K. J.Gilhooly

• Variation in Working Memory By Andrew R. A.Conway, et. al.

• Memory Capacity By Nelson Cowan

• Cognition and Intelligence By Robert J. Sternberg,Jean E. Pretz

6 10 EXTERNAL LINKS

• General Factor of Intelligence By Robert J. Stern-berg, Elena Grigorenko

• Neurological Basis of Learning, Development andDiscovery By Anton E. Lawson

• Memory and Human Cognition By John T. E.Richardson

• Society for Neuroscience. http://www.sfn.org/index.cfm?pagename=about_sfn#timeline Re-trieved 14 August 2009

• Keiji Tanaka,"Current Opinion in Neurobiology”,(2007)

10 External links• Cognitive Neuroscience Society Homepage

• There’s Something about Zero

• What Is Cognitive Neuroscience?, JamieWard/Psychology Press

• goCognitive - Educational Tools for Cognitive Neu-roscience (including video interviews)

• CogNet, The Brain and Cognitive Sciences Com-munity Online, MIT

• Cognitive Neuroscience Arena, Psychology Press

• Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, CUJCS,Spring 2002

• Whole Brain Atlas Top 100 Brain Structures

• Cognitive Neuroscience Discussion Group

• John Jonides, a big role in Cognitive Neurosciencesby Beebrite

• School of Cognitive Science, Jadavpur University

• Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience

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