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As introduced in Chapter 1, the goal of cognitive neuroscience is to explain cognitive processes and behavior in terms of the structure and function of the brain and the rest of the nervous system. A critical contribution of cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the importance of measuring behavioral responses during cognitive and perceptual tasks as a means of inferring what transpires as the nervous system translates stimuli into appropriate actions, thoughts, and other behaviors. By applying these psychological paradigms in conjunction with neuroscience techniques and methods, investigators have increasingly been able to directly relate the biology of brain functions to the mental functions studied by cognitive scientists. These findings in turn help constrain and guide cognitive models of behavior, as part of a synergistic interplay between the fields that form the central core of cognitive neuroscience. Neuroscience-based approaches can be divided into two broad categories: (1) studying changes in cognitive behavior when the brain has been perturbed in some way, and (2) measuring brain activity while cognitive tasks are being performed (Figure 2.1). For the first of these approaches, disturbances of brain function due to clinical brain lesions resulting from stroke, trauma, or disease have been enormously useful for investigating the role of the brain in specific cognitive processes. In addition, methods that employ pharmacological and electrical perturbations of brain function, including those applied in a temporary fashion, have also been used to great advantage in both human subjects and experimental animals (see Introductory Box). The second main approach—that of measuring brain activity while a subject is engaged in a specific cognitive task—takes advantage of a variety of currently available electrophysiological and imaging techniques in both humans and animals. Both of these approaches have altered and accelerated our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the higher brain functions that are the focus of cognitive neuroscience.