Mind on the run

摘要

Cognitive neuroscience is on a roll and everyone, it seems, wants a piece of the action. Hunting for the neural basis of higher cognitive functions, the sort of stuff that makes us, well, us and not some other species of chimp, has always held great appeal for the simple reason that it seems to get us, or so is the hope anyway, a step closer to understanding something fundamental about the human condition. The progress on the matter, for most of the last century at least, seemed to fall laughably short of this lofty, humanistic goal. Even if we allowed for some exceptions-EEG comes to mind-there just was not a way, some clever eavesdropping device perhaps, that could deliver the goodies. Neuroscientists and psychologists had to contend with studying the human mind by proxy-rat brains, monkey brains, brain-damaged humans, etc-and by approximation-rather basic learning paradigms of one sort or another.