Cognitive neuroscience: history and study methods

The enormous technological advances that have been made in the last half century have 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, result of the integration of many sciences that study the brain.

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What is cognitive neuroscience?

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 do this, students of cognitive neuroscience use an interdisciplinary approach that combines the analysis of images of the brain, neurophysiology, mathematics, behavioral genetics, computer science, psychiatry, psychometry, and experimental psychology, as well as any other scientific paradigms that may result from utility.

The field of study of this discipline overlaps greatly 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 anatomy and nervous system functions, such as psychiatry, making it difficult to distinguish between they.

What cognitive processes do you study?

Among the processes and aspects of human experience that are framed in the area of ​​interest of cognitive neuroscience we find learning, language, intelligence, creativity, awareness, attention, memory, the emotion, decision making, empathy, social cognition, the 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 lesions and alterations, since the relationship between neurological damage and cognitive and behavioral disorders consequent allows 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 corresponding behaviors, throughout life, from gestation to birth. aging.

History of this discipline

If we analyze the history of science we can find multiple antecedents of cognitive neuroscience. Among these, the phrenology of Franz Gall stands out, which sought to attribute each mental function to an area other than the brain, the localization theories of John Hughlings Jackson or the pioneering studies of Drill Y 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 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 neurosciences had developed independently, with hardly any works that united the knowledge of both.

In recent decades, the emphasis on brain localizationism that was typical of the beginnings of cognitive neuroscience has been surpassed by the study of cognitive functions for what they really are: a set of highly complex and widely distributed processes throughout the system highly strung.

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Study techniques and methods

The study methods of cognitive neuroscience vary as much as the branches of science from which this discipline draws. At present, however, there is a particular interest in the use of neuroimaging techniques to study the anatomy and functions of the brain.

In this sense, functional magnetic resonance imaging is particularly noteworthy, which allows analyzing the activity neuronal through changes in blood flow in different regions of the brain, or the electroencephalography, consisting of the measurement of brain electrical activity by placing electrodes on the scalp.

Psychophysics, which is defined as the study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations that provoke, was fundamental in the early analysis of cognitive processes such as forgetting or perception auditory. Currently some of its methods are used within the framework of cognitive neuroscience, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation.

In the near past, techniques that are based on recent computer science advances, such as the experimental and exploratory use of computational models, artificial intelligence or virtual reality. On the other hand, cognitive and behavioral genomics are contributing highly relevant data to cognitive neuroscience.

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