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Cognitive neuroscience

The field of cognitive neuroscience concerns the scientific study of the neural mechanisms underlying cognition and is a branch of neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience overlaps with cognitive psychology, and focuses on the neural substrates of mental processes and their behavioral manifestations. The boundaries between psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience have become quite blurred. Cognitive neuroscientists tend to have a background in experimental psychology, neurobiology, neurology, physics, and mathematics. Methods employed in cognitive neuroscience include psychophysical experiments, functional neuroimaging, electrophysiological studies of neural systems and, increasingly, cognitive genomics and behavioral genetics. Clinical studies in psychopathology in patients with cognitive deficits constitute an important aspect of cognitive neuroscience. The main theoretical approaches are computational neuroscience and the more traditional, descriptive cognitive psychology theories such as psychometrics.

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June 8, 2026

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