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Preface to the fourth edition The motivation for writing this book came out of my experiences of teaching cognitive neuroscience.When asked by students which book they should buy, I felt that none of the existing books would satisfactorily meet their needs. Other books in the market were variously too encyclopedic,too advanced or not up to date,or gave short shrift to explaining the methods of the field.My brief for writing this textbook was to provide a text that presents key ideas and findings but is not too long.that is up to date and that considers both method and theory.I hope that it will be useful to both lecturers and students. In writing a book on cognitive neuroscience I had to make a decision as to how much would be“cognitive'”and how much would be“neuroscience. In my opinion,the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive neuroscience lie within the cognitive psychology tradition.Some of the most elegant studies using methods such as fMRI and TMS have been motivated by previous research in cognitive psychology and neuropsychology.The ultimate aim of cognitive neuroscience is to provide a brain-based account of cognition.and so the methods of cognitive neuroscience must necessarily speak to some aspect of brain function.However.I believe that cognitive neuroscience has much to learn from cognitive psychology in terms of which theoretically interesting questions to ask. In Chapter 1.I discuss the current status of cognitive neuroscience as I see it.Some of the topics raised in this chapter are directly aimed at other researchers in the field who are skeptical about the merits of the newer methodologies.i suspect that students who are new to the field will approach the topic with oper mindedness rather than skepticism,but I hope that they will ne ertheless be able to gain something from this debate. Chapter 2 is intended primarily as a reference source that can be referred back to.It is deliberately pitched at a need-to-know level. Chapters3to 5 des ibe in detail the methods of c The aim ognitive neuroscience i h nd.in d if the which the field is t ents fully understand them opin ed.I also hope that these hapters will he Preface to the fourth edition The motivation for writing this book came out of my experiences of teaching cognitive neuroscience. When asked by students which book they should buy, I felt that none of the existing books would satisfactorily meet their needs. Other books in the market were variously too encyclopedic, too advanced or not up to date, or gave short shrift to explaining the methods of the field. My brief for writing this textbook was to provide a text that presents key ideas and findings but is not too long, that is up to date and that considers both method and theory. I hope that it will be useful to both lecturers and students. In writing a book on cognitive neuroscience I had to make a decision as to how much would be “cognitive” and how much would be “neuroscience.” In my opinion, the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive neuroscience lie within the cognitive psychology tradition. Some of the most elegant studies using methods such as fMRI and TMS have been motivated by previous research in cognitive psychology and neuropsychology. The ultimate aim of cognitive neuroscience is to provide a brain-based account of cognition, and so the methods of cognitive neuroscience must necessarily speak to some aspect of brain function. However, I believe that cognitive neuroscience has much to learn from cognitive psychology in terms of which theoretically interesting questions to ask. In Chapter 1, I discuss the current status of cognitive neuroscience as I see it. Some of the topics raised in this chapter are directly aimed at other researchers in the field who are skeptical about the merits of the newer methodologies. I suspect that students who are new to the field will approach the topic with open-mindedness rather than skepticism, but I hope that they will nevertheless be able to gain something from this debate. Chapter 2 is intended primarily as a reference source that can be referred back to. It is deliberately pitched at a need-to-know level. Chapters 3 to 5 describe in detail the methods of cognitive neuroscience. The aim of an undergraduate course in cognitive neuroscience is presumably to enable students to critically evaluate the field and, in my opinion, this can only be achieved if the students fully understand the limitations of the methods on which the field is based. I also hope that these chapters will be
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