A gateway, not an encyclopedia
The science of thinking things
Cognitive science studies the mind by combining psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and anthropology — six older fields asking one shared question: how does perception become belief, language become thought, and could a machine ever do either?
For Researchers
Find the field's people and venues
Societies, journals, and a directory that sets the bar at focused, published work.
For Students
Degree programs, by institution
Degrees, fellowships, and self-directed tracks from institutions actually doing the work.
For Everyone Else
The top shelf
Books, podcasts, magazines, and free courses, chosen for people just getting curious.
Latest in the news
Imagined and spoken syllables share planning neurons but split apart in sensorimotor cortex
Using high-density electrocorticography in nine patients undergoing awake brain-tumor surgery with language mapping, a team from Fudan University's Huashan Hospital, ShanghaiTech University, NYU Shanghai, and collaborating institutions tracked how cortex encodes the articulatory movement trajectories of syllables that were either said aloud or only imagined. Supramodal populations in middle premotor, subcentral, and postcentral–supramarginal regions coded both modes during planning, while populations specific to imagery or to articulation sat interleaved in primary sensorimotor cortex. A decoder built on these signals identified imagined syllables with a median accuracy of 80.4% (chance 16.7%), close to the 78.3% it reached for spoken ones, which the authors say bears on imagery-based brain–computer interfaces.
Next on the calendar
SNL 2026 — Annual Meeting of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language
Geneva, Switzerland (Centre International de Conférences Genève) · September 29, 2026
Independent organization · For researchers
The Cognitive Science Society publishes the field's research
Not part of this site — the Cognitive Science Society is the field's own professional body, founded in 1979. It publishes two peer-reviewed journals, Cognitive Science and Topics in Cognitive Science, and runs the annual CogSci conference.