An Introduction to Neuropsychology » Cognitive Neuroscience

What is cognitive neuroscience?

Think about what your brain is doing right now. You are looking at words (perception), working out what they mean (language), and storing some of them for later (memory). All of these are mental processes. They happen inside your head, so we cannot see them directly. But we can study the brain that produces them.

That is the job of cognitive neuroscience. It asks one big question: how do the structure and function of the brain relate to behaviour and cognition? In plain words, it tries to find out which parts of the brain are involved when we think, remember, see and speak, and what changes in our behaviour when those parts are not working properly.

Key terms:

• Cognitive neuroscience: the study of how the structure and function of the brain relate to behaviour and cognition.
• Cognition: the mental processes we use to know and understand things, such as thinking, memory, perception and language.
• Structure of the brain: what the brain is made of and where its parts are.
• Function of the brain: what each part of the brain does.

Two sciences joined together

The name tells you what it is made of. It joins two sciences.

On their own, each science only tells half the story. Biology can describe a part of the brain, but it cannot say what that part means for how you act. Psychology can describe how people remember, but on its own it cannot show which part of the brain is involved. Put together, they can say which part of the brain does a job and how that job shapes what a person does. This is why cognitive neuroscience brings biology and psychology together.

What counts as cognition?

You have already met most of the mental processes that cognitive neuroscientists study:

• Thinking: planning, making decisions and solving problems.
• Memory: taking in, storing and getting back information.
• Perception: making sense of what our senses pick up.
• Language: understanding what is said and putting our own thoughts into words.

Cognitive neuroscience takes each of these and asks, "Which part of the brain is doing this?"

How do researchers link a mental process to a brain area?

A researcher cannot just look at a brain and see a memory. So they build the link in steps. There are two main ways of doing it.

The first way needs equipment that can show the brain at work. These tools are called scanning techniques, and they are the topic of the next lesson. For now, remember that the idea is the same each time: match a mental process to a place in the brain.

Examples you already know

You have met this kind of link before, in earlier lessons.

You also know that localisation of function is the idea that different parts of the brain do different jobs. Cognitive neuroscience uses that idea. It then goes further, by linking those jobs to behaviour and to the mental processes behind it.

Why does it matter?

• It explains behaviour. If we know which part of the brain is involved in a skill, we can understand why a person behaves as they do when that part works well, or badly.
• It gives psychology firm evidence. Mental processes are hidden. Evidence from the brain gives researchers something they can measure, instead of relying only on what people say.
• It helps people. Knowing how the brain is linked to behaviour helps us understand what an injury or a stroke has changed. You will look at this in a later lesson on neurological damage.

Exam-style question

(a) What is meant by cognitive neuroscience? [2 marks]

(b) Explain one way in which cognitive neuroscience brings together biology and psychology. [2 marks]