The enormous technological progress that has been made in the last half century has allowed the development of fields of study that previously did not exist as such. In this article we will review the definition, objectives, history and study methods of cognitive neuroscience the result of the integration of many sciences that study the brain.
Cognitive neuroscience has as its main objective the understanding of the human mind; In particular, this discipline aims to identify the relationship between cognitive phenomena (as well as their observable manifestations) and the brain structures in which they are based. In other words, This science seeks the biological bases of cognition
To achieve this, cognitive neuroscience scholars use an interdisciplinary approach that combines brain image analysis, neurophysiology, mathematics, behavioral genetics, computer science, psychiatry, psychometrics and experimental psychology, as well as any other paradigm. scientist who may be useful.
The field of study of this discipline largely overlaps with that of cognitive psychology The development of advanced methods to study the brain has favored the rapprochement between this branch of psychology and other sciences interested in the anatomy and functions of the nervous system, such as psychiatry, making it difficult to distinguish between them.
What cognitive processes do you study?
Among the processes and aspects of human experience that fall within the area of interest of cognitive neuroscience we find learning, language, intelligence, creativity, consciousness, attention, memory emotion, decision making, empathy, social cognition, perception of one’s own body or the sleep-wake cycle.
A particularly relevant aspect for cognitive neuroscience is the analysis of the cognitive deficits present in people with brain injuries and alterations, since the relationship between neurological damage and cognitive and behavioral disorders consequential results allow us to infer the functions that depend on the affected regions.
On the other hand, developmental cognitive neuroscience is a subdiscipline that deals with analyzing the changes that occur in the brain, and consequently in cognitive functions and the corresponding behaviors, throughout life, from gestation to the aging.
History of this discipline
If we analyze the history of science we can find multiple antecedents of cognitive neuroscience. These include the phrenology of Franz Gall, who sought to attribute each mental function to a different area of the brain, the localization theories of John Hughlings Jackson and the pioneering studies of Broca and Wernicke on brain injuries.
However, the consolidation of this paradigm as we know it today has been fundamentally attributed to the popularization of cognitive psychology and neuropsychology closely linked to the development of neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging or positron emission tomography.
These methodological advances favored the integration of the contributions made by many disciplines regarding the relationship between the brain and cognition. Thus, cognitive neuroscience emerged between the 1960s and 1980s as an interdisciplinary paradigm that allowed us to study the human mind taking advantage of all the available techniques.
George Miller and Michael Gazzaniga coined the term “cognitive neuroscience” in the late 1970s. Until then, cognitivist-oriented psychology and neuroscience had developed independently, with hardly any work that united the knowledge of both.
In recent decades, the emphasis on brain localization that was typical of the beginnings of cognitive neuroscience has been surpassed by the study of cognitive functions as what they really are: a set of very complex processes widely distributed throughout the nervous system. .
Study techniques and methods
The study methods of cognitive neuroscience vary as much as the branches of science from which this discipline draws. Currently, however, there is particular interest in the use of neuroimaging techniques to study the anatomy and functions of the brain
In this sense, functional magnetic resonance stands out especially, which allows analyzing neuronal activity through the changes that occur in the blood flow of different regions of the brain, or electroencephalography, consisting of the measurement of brain electrical activity by placing of electrodes on the scalp.
Psychophysics, which is defined as the study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations they provoke, was fundamental in the early analysis of cognitive processes such as forgetting or auditory perception. Currently some of its methods are used within the framework of cognitive neuroscience, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation.
In the recent past, techniques that are based on recent computer advances have acquired great relevance, such as the experimental and exploratory use of computational models, artificial intelligence or virtual reality On the other hand, cognitive and behavioral genomics are providing very relevant data to cognitive neuroscience.
