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History
The NSF Cognitive Neuroscience Program has supported research
since 2001.
| 2001 |
Steven Breckler, Founding Director |
| 2001-2003 |
Larry Parsons, Director |
| 2003-present |
Lynne E. Bernstein, Director |
Cognitive
neuroscience has emerged in the last decade as an intensely
active and influential discipline, forged from interactions
among the cognitive sciences, neurology, neuroimaging (including
physics and statistics), physiology, neuroscience, psychiatry,
and other fields. Of particular importance for this discipline
have been new methods for non-invasive neuroimaging that integrate
functional and anatomical measures of humans performing psychological
tasks. As this field is reaching maturity, the National Science
Foundation intends for the new cognitive neuroscience emphasis
to spur the development of highly novel techniques and models
directed toward enabling basic scientific understanding of
a broad range of issues involving brain, cognition, and behavior.
The emphasis at NSF will be placed on integration of the cognitive
sciences, basic sciences, and engineering in service of insights
into healthy functions of brain, cognition, and behavior.
The cross-disciplinary
integration and exploitation of new techniques in cognitive
neuroscience has generated a rapid growth in significant scientific
advances. Research topics have included sensory processes
(including olfaction, thirst, multi-sensory integration),
higher perceptual processes (for faces, music, etc.), higher
cognitive functions (e.g., decision-making, reasoning, mathematics,
mental imagery, awareness), language (e.g., syntax, multi-lingualism,
discourse), sleep, affect, social processes, learning, memory,
attention, motor, and executive functions. Cognitive neuroscientists
further clarify their findings by examining developmental
and transformational aspects of such phenomena across the
span of life, from infancy to late adulthood, and through
evolutionary time.
New frontiers
in cognitive neuroscience research have emerged from investigations
that integrate data from a variety of techniques. One very
useful technique has been neuroimaging, including positron
emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), optical imaging (near
infrared spectroscopy or NIRS), anatomical MRI, and diffusion
tensor imaging (DTI). A second class of techniques includes
physiological recording such as subdural and deep brain electrode
recording, electroencephalography (EEG), event-related electrical
potentials (ERPs), and galvanic skin responses (GSRs). In
addition, stimulation methods have been employed, including
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), subdural and deep
brain electrode stimulation, and drug stimulation. A fourth
approach involves cognitive and behavioral methods, such as
lesion-deficit neuropsychology and experimental psychology.
Other techniques have included genetic analysis, molecular
modeling, and computational modeling. The foregoing variety
of methods is used with individuals in healthy, neurological,
psychiatric, and cognitively-impaired conditions. The data
from such varied sources can be further clarified by comparison
with invasive neurophysiological recordings in non-human primates
and other mammals.
Findings
from cognitive neuroscience can elucidate functional brain
organization, such as the operations performed by a particular
brain area and the system of distributed, discrete neural
areas supporting a specific cognitive, perceptual, motor,
or affective operation or representation. Moreover, these
findings can reveal the effect on brain organization of individual
differences (including genetic variation), plasticity, and
recovery of function following damage to the nervous system.
Cognitive neuroscience also can elucidate the duration and
sequencing of sub-processes, for example, by integrating high
temporal resolution MEG data with high spatial resolution
fMRI within subject and task. Such finely calibrated data
can then inform cognitive and behavioral process models. Subsequent
comparisons of brain organization across species may allow
the neural basis of such processes to be understood in an
evolutionary context.
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