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Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental processes. It addresses the questions of how cognitive activities are affected or controlled by neural circuits in the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both neuroscience and psychology, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology and affective neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neurobiology, and computational modeling.
Neurocognitive functions are cognitive functions closely linked to the function of particular areas, neural pathways, or cortical networks in the brain, ultimately served by the substrate of the brain's neurological matrix. Therefore, their understanding is closely linked to the practice of neuropsychology and cognitive neuroscience – two disciplines that broadly seek to understand how the structure and function of the brain relate to cognition and behaviour.
Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology concerned with how a person's cognition and behavior are related to the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Professionals in this branch of psychology often focus on how injuries or illnesses of the brain affect cognitive and behavioral functions.
Neuropsychological tests are specifically designed tasks that are used to measure a psychological function known to be linked to a particular brain structure or pathway. Tests are used for research into brain function and in a clinical setting for the diagnosis of deficits. They usually involve the systematic administration of clearly defined procedures in a formal environment. Neuropsychological tests are typically administered to a single person working with an examiner in a quiet office environment, free from distractions. As such, it can be argued that neuropsychological tests at times offer an estimate of a person's peak level of cognitive performance. Neuropsychological tests are a core component of the process of conducting neuropsychological assessment, along with personal, interpersonal and contextual factors.
Clinical neuropsychology is a sub-field of cognitive science and psychology concerned with the applied science of brain-behaviour relationships. Clinical neuropsychologists use this knowledge in the assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and or rehabilitation of patients across the lifespan with neurological, medical, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, as well as other cognitive and learning disorders. The branch of neuropsychology associated with children and young people is pediatric neuropsychology.
Neuropsychological assessment was traditionally carried out to assess the extent of impairment to a particular skill and to attempt to determine the area of the brain which may have been damaged following brain injury or neurological illness. With the advent of neuroimaging techniques, location of space-occupying lesions can now be more accurately determined through this method, so the focus has now moved on to the assessment of cognition and behaviour, including examining the effects of any brain injury or neuropathological process that a person may have experienced.
The language module or language faculty is a hypothetical structure in the human brain which is thought to contain innate capacities for language, originally posited by Noam Chomsky. There is ongoing research into brain modularity in the fields of cognitive science and neuroscience, although the current idea is much weaker than what was proposed by Chomsky and Jerry Fodor in the 1980s. In today's terminology, 'modularity' refers to specialisation: language processing is specialised in the brain to the extent that it occurs partially in different areas than other types of information processing such as visual input. The current view is, then, that language is neither compartmentalised nor based on general principles of processing. It is modular to the extent that it constitutes a specific cognitive skill or area in cognition.
Agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) is a rare birth defect in which there is a complete or partial absence of the corpus callosum. It occurs when the development of the corpus callosum, the band of white matter connecting the two hemispheres in the brain, in the embryo is disrupted. The result of this is that the fibers that would otherwise form the corpus callosum are instead longitudinally oriented along the ipsilateral ventricular wall and form structures called Probst bundles.
Edith F. Kaplan was an American psychologist. She was a pioneer of neuropsychological tests and did most of her work at the Boston VA Hospital. Kaplan is known for her promotion of clinical neuropsychology as a specialty area in psychology. She examined brain-behavioral relationships in aphasia, apraxia, developmental issues in clinical neuropsychology, as well as normal and abnormal aging. Kaplan helped develop a new method of assessing brain function with neuropsychological assessment, called "The Boston Process Approach."
Eleanor M. Saffran, an American neuroscientist, was a researcher in the field of Cognitive Neuropsychology. Her interest in Neuropsychology began at the Baltimore City hospitals of Johns Hopkins University, where her research unit focused on neurological patients with language or cognitive impairments. In papers published between 1976 and 1982, Dr. Saffran spelled out the methodological tenets of “cognitive neuropsychology” exemplified in her studies of aphasia, alexia, auditory verbal agnosia, and short-term memory impairment.
Marcel Kinsbourne is an Austrian-born pediatric neurologist and cognitive neuroscientist who was an early pioneer in the study of brain lateralization. Kinsbourne obtained his M.D. degree in 1955 and D.M. degree in 1963 at Oxford University, where he served on the Psychology Faculty from 1964, before relocating to the United States in 1967. He has held Professorships in both Neurology and Psychology at Duke University and the University of Toronto, and he has headed the Behavioral Neurology Research Division at the Shriver Center in Boston, Massachusetts. He also served as Presidents of the International Neuropsychological Society and the Society for Philosophy and Psychology.
Jyotsna Vaid is a Professor of Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience and Women's and Gender Studies at Texas A&M University. Vaid's research examines the impact of multiple language experience by considering properties of specific languages and variability in when and how multiple languages were acquired by bilinguals. Her research has examined the processing of evidentiality in Turkish, the processing of the impersonal se construction in Spanish, and word recognition in biscriptal readers of Hindi and Urdu. She has published extensively on the cognitive and neural bases of bilingualism. Most notably, Vaid's research in neuropsychology has clarified the role of the two cerebral hemispheres in bilingual language processing; her work shows that early onset of bilingualism is associated with more bilateral involvement in language, in contrast to the greater left hemisphere dominance for language among single language users. Recently she has examined cognitive and psycholinguistic aspects of informal translation experience among bilinguals, or language brokering. Other topics on which she has published include number processing in bilinguals, creative thought, cognitive bases of humor, spatial biases in cognition arising from directional reading habits, self presentation in personal ads, and gender and race disparities in professional visibility in academia.
Some of the research that is conducted in the field of psychology is more "fundamental" than the research conducted in the applied psychological disciplines, and does not necessarily have a direct application. The subdisciplines within psychology that can be thought to reflect a basic-science orientation include biological psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and so on. Research in these subdisciplines is characterized by methodological rigor. The concern of psychology as a basic science is in understanding the laws and processes that underlie behavior, cognition, and emotion. Psychology as a basic science provides a foundation for applied psychology. Applied psychology, by contrast, involves the application of psychological principles and theories yielded up by the basic psychological sciences; these applications are aimed at overcoming problems or promoting well-being in areas such as mental and physical health and education.
Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, is professor of clinical neuropsychology at the department of psychiatry and Medical Research Council (MRC)/Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge. She is also an honorary clinical psychologist at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. She has an international reputation in the fields of cognitive psychopharmacology, neuroethics, neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry and neuroimaging.
Vicki Anderson is an Australian clinical neuropsychologist and researcher. Since 2002 she has been the Theme Director of the Critical Care and Neurosciences group at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and she established the Australian Centre for Child Neuropsychological Studies at the Royal Children's Hospital.
Linda Richards is an Australian researcher at Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland.
Alfredo Ardila was a Colombian neuropsychologist. He graduated as a psychologist from the National University of Colombia and received a doctoral degree in neuropsychology from the Moscow State University where he worked with Alexander R. Luria. He published in cognitive and behavioral neurosciences, especially in neuropsychology. His research interests included brain organization of cognition, the historical origin of human cognition, aphasia, and bilingualism.
Paul Satz was an American psychologist, and one of the founders of the discipline neuropsychology. His research on the relationship between the brain and human behavior spanned diverse topics including laterality, handedness, and developmental disorders. He published over 300 publications, received numerous grants and awards, and established the first neuropsychology lab. Towards the latter part of his career, Satz's research interests focused more on the cognitive deficits associated with head injury, dementia, and ageing.
Developmental neuropsychology combines the fields of neuroscience and developmental psychology, while drawing from various other related disciplines. It examines the relationship of behavior and brain function throughout the course of an individual's lifespan, though often emphasis is put on childhood and adolescence when the majority of brain development occurs. Research tends to focus on development of important behavioral functions like perception, language, and other cognitive processes. Studies in this field are often centered around children or other individuals with developmental disorders or various kinds of brain related trauma or injury. A key concept of this field is that looks at and attempts to relate the psychological aspects of development, such as behavior, comprehension, cognition, etc., to the specific neural structures; it draws parallels between behavior and mechanism in the brain. Research in this field involves various cognitive tasks and tests as well as neuroimaging. Some of the many conditions studied by developmental neuropsychologists include congenital or acquired brain damage, autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder, executive dysfunction, seizures, intellectual disabilities, obsessive compulsive disorder, stuttering, schizophrenia, developmental aphasia, and other learning delays such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyspraxia.
Giovanni Berlucchi is an Italian physiologist, academic, and author. He is a professor Emeritus at the Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine, and Movement Sciences at the University of Verona.
References
- 1 2 "Neuroscience News Winter 2010". UCLA Brain Research Institute. 2010. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
- ↑ "National Organization for Disorders of the Corpus Callosum".
- ↑ irc5.qbi.uq.edu.au
- ↑ "Founding Members of ISSR". ISSR. 2007. Archived from the original on 29 March 2008. Retrieved 21 January 2015.
- ↑ "Travis Research Institute – Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum". Travis Research Institute. 2011. Retrieved 21 January 2015.
- ↑ - Faculty Page at Fuller Theological Seminary
- ↑ "The Outstanding Books in Theology and the Natural Sciences Prize". Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences . Retrieved 22 January 2015.
- ↑ "Past Alumni Award Recipients". Point Loma Nazarene University. 2012. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
- ↑ "Warren Brown | Closer to Truth". PBS . Retrieved 22 January 2015.
- ↑ "APA Membership Types: Fellows". American Psychological Association. 2015. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
- ↑ "Division 40 of the American Psychological Association". American Psychological Association . Retrieved 22 January 2015.
