cognitive

• Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific study of the influence of brain structures on mental processes
• Mapping brain areas to specific cognitive functions has a long history in psychology
• As early as the 1860s Paul Broca had identified how damage to an area of the frontal lobe (which came to be known as Broca's Area) could permanently impair speech production
• In the last twenty-five years, with advances in brain imaging techniques such as fMRI and PET scans, scientists have been able to systematically observe and describe the neurological basis of mental processes
• Research involving tasks that required the use of episodic and semantic memory showed how these different types of long-term memory may be located on opposite sides of the prefrontal cortex
• The system in overall charge of working memory-the central executive - is thought to reside in a similar area
• Scanning techniques have also proved useful in establishing the neurological basis of some mental disorders, such as the link between the parahippocampal gyrus and OCD
• The focus of cognitive neuroscience has expanded recently to include the use of computer-generated models that are designed to 'read' the brain, leading to the development of mind-mapping techniques known as 'brain fingerprinting'
• One possible future application of brain fingerprinting could be to analyse the brain wave patterns of eyewitnesses to determine whether they are lying in court