TEHRAN – British neuroscientist Richard Passingham’s 2016 book “Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction” has been published in Persian.

Translated by Ali-Akbar Arjmand-Rad and Zahra Yaminifar, the book was published by Chatrang Publications.

Up to the 1960s, psychology was deeply under the influence of behaviorism, which focused on stimuli and responses, and regarded consideration of what may happen in the mind as unapproachable scientifically.

This began to change with the devising of methods to try to tap into what was going on in the “black box” of the mind, and the development of “cognitive psychology”. 

With the study of patients who had suffered brain damage or injury to limited parts of the brain, outlines of brain components and processes began to take shape, and by the end of the 1970s, a new science, cognitive neuroscience, was born. 

But it was with the development of ways of accessing activation of the working brain using imaging techniques such as PET and MRI that cognitive neuroscience came into its own as a science cutting across psychology and neuroscience, with strong connections to the philosophy of the mind. 

Experiments involving subjects in scanners while doing various tasks, thinking, problem-solving and remembering are shedding light on the brain processes involved. The research is exciting and new, and often makes media headlines. But, there is much misunderstanding about what brain imaging tells us, and the interpretation of studies on cognition.

In this “Very Short Introduction”, Passingham gives a provocative and exciting account of the nature and scope of this relatively new field, and the techniques available to us, focusing on the investigation of the human brain. 

He explains what brain imaging shows, pointing out common misconceptions, and gives a brief overview of the different aspects of human cognition: perceiving, attending, remembering, reasoning, deciding and acting.

Photo: Front cover of the Persian translation of Richard Passingham’s book “Cognitive Neuroscience”.

MMS/YAW