Cognitive Neuroscience - Historical Origins

Historical Origins

Although the task of cognitive neuroscience is to describe how the brain creates the mind, historically it has progressed by investigating how a certain area of the brain supports a given mental faculty. In other words, for most of its history, the biggest question of cognitive neuroscience was "Where?" We could begin with Aristotle, who argued that sensory information went from the senses to the heart, which he thought was the seat of reason. Later observers correctly identified the brain as the biological substrate for thinking. However, early efforts to subdivide the brain proved problematic. The phrenologist movement failed to supply a scientific basis for their theories and has since been rejected. However, the phrenological assumption that specific areas of the brain conduct specific functions still applies. The modern evidence for this specificity (sometimes called modularity) includes direct recording from single neurons, case studies of patients with brain damage or disease, recording of electrical or magnetic activity in the brain through advanced scanning techniques, and even direct manipulation of brain activity.