Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging Techniques

Cognitive neuroscience has been termed the biology of mind. As such it is, to a large extent at least, a science about the human mind, as many of the higher cognitive functions, including language processing, episodic memory and executive functions, can best or exclusively be studied in human subjects. To fulfil its promise, cognitive neuroscience is in need of techniques that can serve as windows to the brain as it carries out the processes that make up the mind. Since human participants are under study, these techniques need to be non-invasive. In light of this, the recent success of cognitive neuroscience can be attributed to two factors: the increasingly sophisticated experimental designs that are borrowed from cognitive science and psychology, and, the methodological developments in neuroimaging techniques.

In the present Chapter and the following one we will concentrate on the two major and most widely used neuroimaging techniques, namely methods derived from electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). While EEG has been around for about 80 years, recent methodological advances in signal analysis have led to a renewed interest in EEG-based experiments. Functional MRI, while having a much shorter history of little more than 15 years, has already reached a high level of sophistication, but more developments regarding analysis techniques are to be expected.