Clinical Cognitive Sciences

Abstract

AbstractClinical sciences involved with the mind and brain, including neurology, psychiatry, endocrinology and clinical psychology all frequently deal with cognitive symptoms, side effects, and risk factors. Consequently, there has long been some interaction between those clinical fields and traditional cognitive sciences, focused on computationalist and embodied approaches to understanding natural and machine cognition. Examples include the advances made in understanding the normal cognitive architecture made by studying its breakdown in disease, as well as the enhanced methods of defining and measuring cognitive disorders stemming from understanding the healthy state. Nevertheless, the fields currently fail to fully exploit the potential for mutual advancement. Here we explore the interactions between traditional clinical and cognitive sciences and highlighted strengths of the relationship, and areas that could benefit from greater multidisciplinary emphasis. We argue that original fields of cognitive science (philosophy, linguistics, computer science, anthropology, psychology and neuroscience) remain the core of the multidisciplinary cognitive sciences, but that they can all be applied fruitfully to clinical issues. We explore this in one sample disorder—voice hearing in schizophrenia, showing the potential for clinically applied cognitive sciences. It is our contention that greater achievement is possible, in both academic and applied fields dealing with cognition, if we can foster a mutually symbiotic relationship between the clinical and cognitive sciences.