The dark side of cognitive neuroscience …

Cognitive neuroscience has detected the neural correlates of various cognitive functions such as memory, attention, language, social cognition and executive abilities (“positive phrenology”). In recent years, researchers in cognitive neuroscience have even tried to go beyond these issues by exploring the neural correlates of consciousness and free will. The project discusses these approaches by developing a “negative phrenology”. This research project answers the question of which kinds of cognitive functions cannot be addressed by classical experimental approaches. However, in its second step it tries to go beyond “negative phrenology”. Here, we suggest and investigate data-driven approaches and the incorporation of phenomenological or first-person data into cognitive neuroscience.