Cognitive Neuroimaging: History, Developments, and Directions

Over the past two decades, the field of cognitive neuroscience has flourished as the leading scientific discipline seeking to rigorously understand the relationship between mind and brain. Central to the excitement surrounding the cognitive neuroscientific revolution has been the advent of in vivo imaging of the brain using fMRI during the performance of cognitive tasks. With this technique for mapping the distribution of brain blood flow over time, researchers are making progress in identifying the networks of brain areas responsible for many fundamental cognitive functions (e. g., memory encoding and retrieval, processing visual information, cognitive functions in complex motor processes). However, the union of psychology, brain neurophysiology, and particle physics that led to functional brain imaging did not happen overnight; the seeds of it can be traced back for more than a century. The symbiotic relationship that has developed among these coevolving fields is a unique story in science, unified through the mutual interest in measuring and mapping the neurophysiological signature of human cognitive function. Ever greater sophistication in designing efficient experimental paradigms and an improved data collection ability are being brought to bear in teasing apart subtle differences between task-related and control states. At the same time, brain energetics and combined neurophysiological approaches are being explored for clues to the origins of the BOLD response. Moreover, raw data repositories are enabling others to mine previously published data in new and clever ways that will further aid in understanding these rich sources of information. As cognitive neuroscience grows, so too will functional neuroimaging, but there are still considerable challenges to meet. This chapter provides an overview of the past and present on fMRI research while speculating on the future for studies of mapping human cognitive function.