Welcome to our blog. The cognitive revolution in neuroscience has been underway for some time, and has been gaining increasing momentum. The field which emerges is called “cognitive neuroscience.”

One of the challenges faced by cognitive neuroscience is that of the gestalt: how do we understand something which appears to be more than the sum of its parts by studying those parts? There are many possible ways to look for answers to this question. One way is to study not only the parts, but also their connections (i.e. causal relationships). We are slowly starting to see combinations of diverse methodologies such as neural network models, graph theory, neuroanatomy and neurophysiology.

A colleague whose research deals exclusively with the workings of the “parts” has often asked, “How can we ever understand how to get from understanding a single cell to understanding cognition?” Part of the mission of this blog is to document how this cognitive revolution in neuroscience attempts to answer that very question.

About the title: Neurevolution

Is it NeurEvolution? Perhaps NeuRevolution? The “Neur” is, of course, in reference to neuron, the basic functional cellular unit of the brain which is thought to be essential for mental function. We remain agnostic as to whether the title refers to either the evolution or revolution of neuroscience, since both denote change. The purpose of this blog is chronicling the great changes taking place in neuroscience due to the profound issues raised by cognitive science. This process is a revolution in that it is causing great change in a short period of time, and it is evolution in the sense that it is an emergent self-organizing process that each of us can only contribute to, not control.

About the blog authors

The authors were both in the Ph.D. program in Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh (CNUP). They both carry out research at the intersection of neuroscience and psychology (i.e. cognitive neuroscience). The authors were also members of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (the CNBC, a joint program at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh).

Michael W. Cole is a post-doctoral researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009 with a PhD. in Neuroscience, and from UC Berkeley in 2003 with a B.A. degree in Cognitive Science. His research mainly involves the use of functional imaging to measure brain activity in humans during higher level cognitive tasks. He is interested in advanced statistical techniques allowing for a greater understanding of the neural basis of cognition. Particular issues of interest include the neural basis of rapid task learning, the neural basis of working memory and attention, the evolution of complex cognition in humans, and the emergence of complex cognition from network dynamics.

Patryk A. Laurent is a fifth year Ph.D. student who graduated from the University of Virginia in 2001 with a B.A. in Cognitive Science. Currently, his research focuses on using eye-movement tracking and reinforcement learning modeling to understand how reward influences future action. Part of this research investigates how information from different parts of the brain — such as sight areas, sound areas, and language areas, influence moment-to-moment decisions about where to look next. He is especially interested in the area of cognitive neuroscience research that studies the relationship between eye-movements and one’s focus of attention. Previous research has involved work with recurrent spiking neural network models of the hippocampus and memory, and capabilities of simple recurrent networks in processing continuous speech. Patryk has also worked for many years as a software developer at a number of companies.