Neurological Science Journal

The cognitive neuroscience is the study of higher cognitive functions that exist in humans, and their underlying neural basis. Cognitive neuroscience draws from linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. Cognitive neuroscientists can take two broad directions: behavioral/experimental or computational/modeling, the aim being to understand the nature of cognition from a neural point of view.

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.

Due to its multidisciplinary nature, cognitive neuroscientists may have various backgrounds. Other than the associated disciplines just mentioned, cognitive neuroscientists may have backgrounds in neurobiology, neurophysiology, neurochemistry, bioengineering, neurology, physics, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and mathematics.

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 basis with 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. With the damage, we can compare how the healthy neural circuits are functioning, and possibly draw conclusions about the basis of the affected cognitive processes.

Cognitive Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary area of study that has emerged from many other fields, perhaps most significantly neuroscience, psychology, and computer science.[3] There were several stages in these disciplines that changed the way researchers approached their investigations and that led to the field becoming fully established. Theoretical approaches include computational neuroscience and cognitive psychology.