Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition,Gazzaniga, Ivry and Mangun 2002, cf. title 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.Gazzaniga 2002, p. xv 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,Hasson, U.; Honey, C. J. (2012). "Future trends in Neuroimaging: Neural processes as expressed within real-life contexts". NeuroImage, 62(2), 1272–1278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.02.004 electrophysiology,Gallina, J.; Marsicano, G.; Romei, V.; Bertini, C. (2023). "Electrophysiological and Behavioral Effects of Alpha-Band Sensory Entrainment: Neural Mechanisms and Clinical Applications". Biomedicines, 11(5), 1399. https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines11051399 cognitive genomics, and behavioral genetics.Bearden, C. E.; Glahn, D. C. (2017). "Cognitive genomics: Searching for the genetic roots of neuropsychological functioning". Neuropsychology, 31(8), 1003–1019. https://doi.org/10.1037/neu0000412
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.Giedd, J.; Blumenthal, J.; Jeffries, N. et al. (1999). "Brain development during childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal MRI study". Nat Neurosci 2, 861–863 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/13158
Theoretical approaches include computational neuroscience and cognitive psychology.
Historical origins Cognitive neuroscience is an interdisciplinary area of study that has emerged from neuroscience and psychology. 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 (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Gestalt theory, neuropsychology, and the cognitive revolution 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.Miller, G. A. (2003). "The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective". Trends in cognitive sciences, 7(3), 141-144. https://www.cell.com/cognitive-sciences/abstract/S1364-6613(03)00029-9
The connection between brain and behavior was first documented in the 16th century BC, in the Edwin Smith Papyrus of Ancient Egypt. While the Ancient Greeks Alcmaeon, Plato, Aristotle in the 5th and 4th centuries BC,Guthri WKC (1971). A History of Greek Philosophy. London: Cambridge University Press. p. 348. and then the Roman physician Galen 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 1848, Phineas Gage became a classic subject for studying the connection between the prefrontal cortex and behavior, decision-making, and consequences when an explosion accident pierced his brain with an iron rod.Bigelow, Henry Jacob (July 1850). "Dr. Harlow's Case of Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head". American Journal of the Medical Sciences. New series. 20 (39): 13–22.
In 1861, French neurologist Paul Broca discovered that a damaged area of the posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pars triangularis, BA45, also known as Broca's area) 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 and Gustav Fritsch 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 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."Camillo Golgi – Facts". NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2025. Tue. 14 Jan 2025. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1906/golgi/facts/
In 1874, German neurologist and psychiatrist Carl Wernicke hypothesized an association between the left posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus and the reflexive mimicking of words and their syllables. Perhaps this was the first serious attempts to localize mental functions to specific locations in the brain. This was mostly achieved by studying the effects of injuries to different parts of the brain on psychological functions. The cases of Broca and Wernicke, 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"
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 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, at that time, of 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 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 (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 the modern Positron Emission Tomography (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 include their insights into the first PET scanner in 1973.Michael E. Phelps, the Enrico Fermi Award 1998. US Department of energy. Retrieved 18.01.2025 from https://science.osti.gov/fermi/Award-Laureates/1990s/phelps PET became a valuable research tool to study brain functioning. This technique can indirectly measure radioactivity signals that indicate increased blood flow associated with increased brain activity.
In 1971, American chemist and physicist Paul Christian Lauterbur invented the idea of MR imaging (MRI). 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 (fMRI), which has been used in many studies in cognitive neuroscience since the 1990s.
Notable perspectives
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, particularly those with epilepsy. He discovered that the epileptic patients often made the same clonic 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,Enersen, O. D. 2009 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.