The Cognitive Neurosciences

Gazzaniga and George Miller coined the term 'cognitive neuroscience' in 1976 to name a new discipline bridging systems neuroscience, computational approaches, and cognitive psychology [citation:4]. The first edition of this volume, published in 1995, consolidated that project into a single reference work. A 1997 review in Philosophy of Science noted the book's stated aim was 'to define the emerging field' and compared its ambitions to canonical texts in connectionism and neurophysiology [citation:9]. The MIT Press describes each edition as 'a benchmark in the developing field,' with the fourth edition presenting entirely new material and charting 'new directions in the study of the biologic underpinnings of complex cognition' [citation:2].

The book is organized into sections, each edited by a specialist who commissions contributions and writes an introduction framing the chapters. The fifth edition (2014) contained sections on plasticity and learning, visual attention, sensation and perception, motor systems, memory, language, social neuroscience, consciousness, methodology, and neuroscience and society [citation:12]. The sixth edition (2020) reorganized and expanded this structure, adding sections on brain circuits over a lifetime, auditory and visual perception, reward and decision making, and methods advances, with section editors including Stanislas Dehaene, Elizabeth Phelps, and Danielle Bassett [citation:3][citation:13]. Each edition replaces the previous chapters entirely rather than updating them.

A 1997 review by philosopher Rick Grush in Philosophy of Science criticized the volume for uneven editorial control across sections. He noted that the language section, edited by Steven Pinker, devoted all seven contributions to defending a Chomskyan view, with connectionist and cognitive linguistics approaches receiving virtually no representation [citation:9]. Grush also observed that the sections lacked consistent introductory chapters, making it difficult for non-specialists to follow technical contributions; he singled out Michael Posner's attention section as a 'refreshing exception' for providing a clear overview [citation:9]. These critiques concern the first edition but raise a recurring structural issue for multi-editor reference works.

A 2010 review in Current Science described the fourth edition as reflecting 'rapid and dramatic advances' since the prior volume, including the integration of genetics with functional imaging and the widespread use of Bayesian modeling to understand sensory and motor systems [citation:4]. The reviewer identified an emerging theoretical framework where 'the brain can perform diverse functions from a set of similar canonical circuits that perform, what might be essentially, similar computations, applied in different domains.' The edition also expanded its coverage of emotion to include moral judgment, empathy, and neuroeconomics—topics that would have been unlikely in a cognitive neuroscience volume five years earlier [citation:4].

A 2001 review in Neuron by Pasko Rakic (who edited the development section) argued that the modular principle of neurocognition was 'under stress' and that the book's contributors showed a 'current intellectual malaise' about it [citation:14]. Rakic criticized the tendency to infer discrete modules from lesion or imaging data, noting that cortical lesions rarely affect only one cognitive function and that subtractive imaging can create 'implausible images of circumscribed activation pretending to illustrate a cortical module for what should be a widely distributed cortical function' [citation:14]. He argued that cognitive functions are interdependent and likely share a common distributed substrate.

The first edition's opening section on molecular and cellular plasticity includes a chapter by Craig Bailey and Eric Kandel on molecular and structural mechanisms underlying long-term memory [citation:20]. This chapter exemplifies the volume's organizing principle: it moves from synaptic physiology in Aplysia to structural changes associated with memory storage, demonstrating how molecular-level findings can illuminate a cognitive phenomenon. The placement of this chapter in the opening section, before development and sensory systems, signals the editors' commitment to grounding cognitive neuroscience in cellular mechanisms. Kandel's contribution connects the volume directly to the experimental tradition he established with Aplysia.