Philosophers and scientists have long speculated about the nature of the human mind and the role of language in making the human mind what it is.

Recent developments, across fields as diverse as robotics, brain imaging, anthropology and speech technology, bring a host of new perspectives to our quest to understand our own inner workings.

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary attempt to understand the human mind. It focuses on abilities such as:

reasoning
perception
memory
awareness
emotion
attention
judgement
motor control
language use
Cognitive science brings together and forms connections between these, through use of methods such as:

computer modelling
linguistic analysis
philosophical reasoning
robotics
neuroimaging
psychological experiments