Neuroemergentism: A Framework for Studying Cognition and the Brain

There has been virtual explosion of studies published in cognitive neuroscience primarily due to increased accessibility to neuroimaging methods, which has led to different approaches in interpretation. This review seeks to synthesize both developmental approaches and more recent views that consider neuroimaging. The ways in which Neuronal Recycling, Neural Reuse, and Language as Shaped by the Brain perspectives seek to clarify the brain bases of cognition will be addressed. Neuroconstructivism as an additional explanatory framework which seeks to bind brain and cognition to development will also be presented. Despite sharing similar goals, the four approaches to understanding how the brain is related to cognition have generally been considered separately. However, we propose that all four perspectives argue for a form of Emergentism in which combinations of smaller elements can lead to a greater whole. This discussion seeks to provide a synthesis of these approaches that leads to the emergence of a theory itself. We term this new synthesis Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuromergentism for short).