A Madness to the Methods in Cognitive Neuroscience?

摘要

Since Paul Broca, the relationship between mind and brain has been the central preoccupation of cognitive neuroscience. In the 19th century, recognition that mental faculties might be understood by observations of individuals with brain damage led to vigorous debates about the properties of mind. By the end of the First World War, neurologists had outlined basic frameworks for the neural organization of language, perception, and motor cognition. Geschwind revived these frameworks in the 1960s and by the 1980s, lesion studies had incorporated methods from experimental psychology, models from cognitive science, formalities from computational approaches, and early developments in structural brain imaging. Around the same time, functional neuroimaging entered the scene. Early xenon probes evolved to the present-day wonders of BOLD and per-fusion imaging. In a quick two decades, driven by these technical advances, centers for cognitive neuroscience now dot the landscape, journals such as this one are thriving, and the annual meeting of the Society for Cognitive Neuroscience is overflowing.