The emergence of cognitive neuroscience

• cognitive psychology is all about brain/ mind processes and how we use experience and information to influence our behaviour
• Cognitive neuroscience is more refined study of individual brain processes on a neuron level, so you need to know about brain mapping
• Development of CN makes the approach more advanced
• The cognitive approach combines the biological approach and cognitive approach, increasing the credibility of the field
• There are 2 ways to investigate the brain using cognitive neuroscience: FMRI and PET scans
• Broca identified damage to an area of the frontal lobe, which could permanently impair speech production
• Research into memory involving tasks which use episodic and semantic memory were able to show how these different types of memory are located on opposite sides of the pre-frontal cortex
• Scanning techniques have also been very useful in detecting the neurological Basis of some neurological disorders affecting the brain such as parahippocampulgyrus and the development of OCD
• Cognitive neuroscience works by analysing the brain with neural imaging techniques and comparing findings of neural imaging to behavioural data
• Strengths

  • This field of research uses clinical, objective, state-of-the-art techniques which makes it high in reliability
  • The applications from findings of research in this field are huge: from education to health to sport to business
• Weaknesses

  • Due to the very clinical nature of the research it does lack some external validity i.e. a brain scan cannot tell you the fine detail of behaviour/cognition or explain a personal experience
  • Findings in this field must be treated with some caution:
  • labelling someone a ‘psychopath’ because they have a dysfunctional amygdala could be damaging to their self-esteem and relationships