Jay Doubleyou: cognitive science and developmental neuroscience

Interesting topics:
Cognitive science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An easier version:
Cognitive science - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Latest news:
Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function
Poverty impairs cognitive function | e! Science News
Poverty strains cognitive abilities, opening door for bad decision-making, new study finds - Washington Post

The politics:
The work of the educationist E.D. Hirsch and the studies in cognitive science assembled and analysed by Daniel Willingham demonstrate, with irresistible power, that a traditional, knowledge-rich curriculum is the key to educational success, whatever path a student eventually decides to follow. Hirsch has proved, over a distinguished academic lifetime, that the greater the level of cultural capital a child enjoys, the more rapidly and effectively they learn to read, and the greater their appetite for further discovery. Willingham’s work - and that of the many cognitive scientists he has analysed - demonstrates that it is through the acquisition of knowledge that intelligence is formed. And the more a child learns, memorises, and commits to heart, the greater the capacity for critical thought and creative work.
Michael Gove MP: Why traditional education is a work of social justice – one that I'm striving to deliver

The history:
In 1959, Noam Chomsky published a scathing review of B. F. Skinner's book Verbal Behavior. At the time, Skinner's behaviorist paradigm dominated psychology: Most psychologists focused on functional relations between stimulus and response, without positing internal representations.
The term cognitive science was coined by Christopher Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on the Lighthill report, which concerned the then-current state of Artificial Intelligence research.^[10]
Cognitive science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An interesting and very popular look at the subject:
Hofstadter has emphasized that GEB is not about mathematics, art, and music but rather about how cognition and thinking emerge from well-hidden neurological mechanisms.
Gödel, Escher, Bach - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The critics:

Is cognitive science full of crap? A biophyics researcher recently asked this of a cognitive science researcher. The latter answered with spirit. My own answer is that of course cog sci is full of crap — except when it’s not. Which makes it like most science, only more so.

It started when Cambridge University memory researcher Jon Simons posted a lament about how proposed UK science-funding cuts especially threaten young, developing researchers. The cog-sci debate broke out when University of College London biophysicist David Colquhoun suggested thatperhaps precious funding might be better used if less were spent on cognitive science:

I couldn’t agree more about the very real danger posed to early-career and even mid-career scientists by the lack of smallish responsive mode grants.

But being in a different area, I may see the problem slightly differently. At the risk of being lynched, I’ll have to admit that I sometimes sigh when see the next “new phrenology” study come out. Only too often the results are uninterpretable (though university PR departments love the fact that, however trivial, they make headlines). The equipment is enormously expensive and perhaps some of that money could be better spent (for example, on fundamental biophysics!).

When pressed for examples, Colquhoun named a couple of studies, most prominently a 2000 study about the “taxi drivers’ hippocampus.” He was referring to work at the lab of Eleanor Maguire, who found that London taxi drivers, who to earn their licenses must pass a horrifically difficult navigational and geographic exam called The Knowledge, had bigger hippocampuses than most people did.

Hippocampuses play an vital role in memory and spatial navigation. As the paper noted, the bigger hippocampi in London cab drivers might mean one of (at least) two things: That memorizing the streets and routes of London made their hippocampuses grow; and/or that having big hippocampuses to start with made you better able to memorize enough routes and streets of the Knowledge to pass it. The paper leaned toward the former explanation.

Colquhoun, however, while admitting he didn’t know the study that well, said he was exasperated both with the sorts of big conclusions often produced by brain-imaging studies studies and with the hype they generate. Colquhoun was drawing on a strain of criticism that had already pained Simons and many of his readers. The charge of “new phrenology” carries a special edge, since phrenology, a sort of skull-reading 150 years ago, was an ugly hoax that now looks one step this side of voodoo.

Is Cognitive Science Full of Crap? - Wired Science

Developmental Neuroscience =
Neural development - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia