Explore Cognitive Science

What is Cognitive Science?

Cognitive science is defined as a collaborative, interdisciplinary field of research that studies intelligence and the human mind. It includes research and experts from the fields of anthropology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and others. Generally speaking, researchers working in cognitive science come together with their various tools, theoretical perspectives, and methodologies to ask and answer questions about the mind and its functions.

While, at first glance, the cognitive sciences may seem to be an arbitrary group of disparate academic fields, a closer look at each discipline with regard to its interest in the human mind reveals an opportune synergy for the study of the mind. Philosophers were some of the first academics to theorize the mind and continue to ask questions related to its function and purpose. Anthropologists regularly work with material relating to the function of the human mind but from the framework of studying culture as a created and motivating force. They may be interested in the effects of cognition on material culture or culture on the mind. Linguists similarly study the reciprocal relationship between spoken and written language, culture, the brain, and the mind. Psychologists interested in cognition analyze how the brain processes information taken from the wider world and how this relates to the mind and physical action taken. Similarly, neuroscientists studying the details of brain architecture and function may take an interest in recreating the connections they find between structures of the brain and functions of the mind. To that end, artificial intelligence is a burgeoning field in the cognitive sciences as it has the potential to test the collective theories of these other fields through computer modeling.