TEDxShirazUniversitySalon

“Whether we know it or not, there resides within our skulls the most complex organ ever known in the universe.” One major scientific challenge of the twenty-first century is to understand the human mind from a biological perspective. By using the integration of cognitive psychology (the scientific study of the mind) and neuroscience (the scientific study of the brain) in the late twentieth century, this challenge began to be met. The result was the advent of a new scientific approach to the mind which addresses a variety of matters ranging from mental processes such as perception, learning and memory to the nature of human emotions, consciousness and awareness, encompassing also questions about free will and what determines its limits. Such an approach to the study of the brain brings with it a better understanding of what makes people who they are and how the brain, with its fatty tissue and all the gyri and sulci, forms the various aspects of one's identity. Moreover, cognitive science establishes significant interactions between the scientific study of the mind and brain and other fields of science. Such interconnections help understand the mechanisms leading to scientific, artistic, interpersonal perception and creativity; and by so doing, science enters the realm of human collective experience.