The Interface between Neuroscience and Psychological Science

A special edition of Current Directions in Psychological Science provides a comprehensive look at one of the most fascinating frontiers in modern science: the interface between psychology and neuroscience.

Authors in this issue include discussions by the world's leading researchers on the most fascinating subjects in science: ourselves.

Topics include:

  • How psychology researchers are using neuroimaging to confirm and expand theories about perception, emotion, attention, language, and other psychological processes;
  • What neuroscience has revealed — and in some instances, led us astray — about long and short-term memory;
  • The neural circuitry involved in the connections between emotion and memory;
  • The incredibly complex processes underlying even our most simple every-day choices;
  • And many more similarly interesting areas of research.

Check out some of the highlights in this special issue:
University of British Columbia psychologist Adele Diamond and colleague Dima Amso of Cornell University argue that one of the major contributions of neuroscience to understanding cognitive development has been in demonstrating that biology is not destiny—experience plays remarkable role in shaping the mind, brain, and body.

Article: "Contributions of Neuroscience to Our Understanding of Cognitive Development" (Current Directions in Psychological Science Volume 17(2))


Major depression is among the most debilitating, prevalent, and recurrent of all psychiatric disorders. Even before the advent of structural and functional neuroimaging research on major depressive disorder, there were strong indications that neural abnormalities play a crucial role in depression. Ian Gotlib and J. Paul Hamilton, Stanford University, present an overview of the neuroimaging research that has assessed the structure and function of several areas in the brain and their role in major depression.

Article: "Neuroimaging and Depression: Current Status and Unresolved Issues" (Current Directions in Psychological Science Volume 17(2))

The discovery that implicit attitudes can automatically and unconsciously influence behavior is of great interest to those concerned with the i mpact of such attitudes on social well-being. New York University psychologists Damian Stanley and Elizabeth Phelps, with Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University, focus on the recent advances in neuroscience enabling researchers to investigate the neural basis of implicit attitudes.

Article: In the report "The Neural Basis of Implicit Attitudes" (Current Directions in Psychological Science Volume 17 (2))

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