Cognitive Neuroscience 5th edition – Michael S. Gazzaniga

Cognitive Neuroscience The Biology of the Mind

Welcome to the Fifth Edition! When cognitive neuroscience emerged in the late 1970s, it remained to be seen whether this new field would have “legs.” Today, the answer is clear: the field has blossomed in spectacular fashion. Cognitive neuroscience is well represented at all research universities, providing researchers and graduate students with the tools and opportunities to develop the interdisciplinary research programs that are the mainstay of the field. Multiple journals, some designed to cover the entire field, and others specialized for particular methodologies or research themes, have been launched to provide venues to report the latest findings. The number of papers increases at an exponential rate. The Cognitive Neuroscience Society has also flourished and just celebrated its 25th year.
The fundamental challenge we faced in laying the groundwork for our early editions was to determine the basic principles that make cognitive neuroscience distinct from physiological psychology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and neuropsychology. It is now obvious that cognitive neuroscience overlaps with, and synthesizes, these disciplinary approaches as researchers aim to understand the neural bases of cognition. In addition, cognitive neuroscience increasingly informs and is informed by disciplines outside the mind–brain sciences, such as systems science and physics, as exemplified by our new Chapter 14: “The Consciousness Problem.”