Cognitive neuroscience: history and methods of study.

A scientific field that studies the relationship between neurons, emotions and thoughts.

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 methods of study of cognitive neuroscience, the result of the integration of many sciences.The result of the integration of many sciences that study the brain.

What is cognitive neuroscience?

The main objective of cognitive neuroscience is to understand 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 this end, cognitive neuroscience scholars use an interdisciplinary approach that combines brain imaging analysis, neurophysiology, mathematics, behavioral genetics, computational science, psychiatry, psychometrics and experimental psychology, as well as any other scientific paradigm that may be useful.

The field of study of this discipline overlaps to a large extent 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 does it study?

Among the processes and aspects of the 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 perception of the world.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 lesions and alterations, given that the relationship between neurological damage and the consequent cognitive and behavioral disturbances The relationship between neurological damage and the resulting cognitive and behavioral disorders allows us to infer the functions that depend on the affected regions.

Developmental cognitive neuroscience, on the other hand, is a subdiscipline concerned with analyzing the changes that occur in the brain, and consequently in cognitive functions and corresponding behaviors, throughout life, from gestation to 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, which sought to attribute each mental function to a different area of the brain, the localizationist theories of John Hughlings Jackson or the pioneering studies of Broca and Wernicke on brain lesions.

However, the consolidation of this paradigm as we know it today has been attributed mainly to the popularization of cognitive psychology. 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 the study of the human mind that made it possible to study the human mind by taking advantage of all 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 brought together the knowledge of both.

In recent decades the emphasis on brain localizationism that was typical of the beginnings of cognitive neuroscience has been superseded by the study of cognitive functions as what they really are: a set of very complex processes widely distributed throughout the nervous system.

Techniques and methods of study

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

Of particular note in this regard are functional magnetic resonance imaging, which allows the analysis of neuronal activity through changes in Blood flow in different regions of the brain, and electroencephalography, which consists of measuring electrical activity in the brain by placing 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. Today some of its methods are used within the framework of cognitive neuroscience, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation.

In the near past, techniques based on recent computational advances, such as the experimental and exploratory use of computational modeling, artificial intelligence or virtual reality. On the other hand, cognitive and behavioral genomics are providing very relevant data to cognitive neuroscience.