BRAIN STUDY

Perhaps most interesting in the contemporary field of brain study are the multiple angles from which science is approaching the infinitely mysterious human brain. Cognitive science, the interdisciplinary umbrella term beneath which all relevant fields of inquiry are contained, draws from psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, biology, and physics. The scope of cognitive science includes subjects like artificial intelligence, attention, language processing, learning and development, memory, and perception and action. Research for this type of brain study, too, is interdisciplinary, and tends to combine inquiry methods drawn from psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and systems theory.

From psychology, researchers studying the brain rely on behavioral experiments. By measuring behavioral responses to different stimuli, one can understand something about how those stimuli are processed, and thus, something about the way the brain functions. These behavioral experiments might include reaction time, eye tracking, and psychophysical responses that require a subject to judge sameness or thresholds of things like a tone, or color.

Another option for study is brain imaging, which involves studying activity within the brain while performing various cognitive tasks. This allows researchers to link behavior to particular brain functions, thereby helping them understand how different information is processed. Different imaging techniques, e.g. single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET), electroencephalography (EEG), or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), vary in their amount of temporal and spatial resolution. But all contribute to the field of brain study.

Next, along with computational modeling in the mode of mathematics and formal logic, others who study the brain take research methods directly from neuroscience and neuropsychology. These methods, like single-cell recording, direct brain stimulation, animal models, and postmortem studies, help researchers further understand the mystery of human intelligence.