Principal Investigator Joshua Tenenbaum
Co-investigators Edward Adelson , John Gabrieli , Edward Gibson , Nancy Kanwisher , Mary Potter , Rebecca Saxe , Kenneth Wexler , Josh McDermott , Laura Schulz
Project Website http://bcs.mit.edu/research/cognitive-science
Cognitive ScienceCognitive science is the scientific study of the human mind. It is a highly interdisciplinary field, combining ideas and methods from psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience. The broad goal of cognitive science is to characterize the nature of human knowledge – its forms and content – and how that knowledge is used, processed, and acquired.
Active areas of cognitive research in the Department include language, memory, visual perception and cognition, thinking and reasoning, social cognition, decision making, and cognitive development.
The study of cognitive science within BCS illustrates the department’s philosophy that understanding the mind and understanding the brain are ultimately inseparable, even with the gaps that currently exist between the core questions of human cognition and the questions that can be productively addressed in molecular, cellular or systems neuroscience. To bridge these gaps, several cognitive labs maintain a primary or secondary focus on cognitive neuroscience research. There are many opportunities for interaction and collaboration between cognitive and neuroscience labs across BCS and its related centers.