ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some basic background information on the methods that cognitive neuroscientists use to measure the brain's structure and function. One of nature's great mysteries is how the brain gives rise to our thoughts, our feelings, and our behavior. The overall goal of cognitive neuroscience is to explain how the brain enables us to think and function in our everyday lives—for example, allowing us to respond to stimuli in our environment, make decisions, remember facts and personal events, and interact. Cognitive neuroscience research often uses a well-controlled behavioral task to isolate a neural process. The methods described so far all involve measuring neural activity, either directly or indirectly, to determine the neural correlates of a cognitive process. The task could be something that has been used over many decades of research or something that is designed specifically to address the project's specific research question and hypothesis.
