Trends and Perspectives in Cognitive Research

Here, we present a selective review of the tendencies in the development of mind-and-brain studies and their emerging perspectives. Our assessment is less subjective in the part, which concerns with major trends of cognitive science. Two of them are, firstly, the interdisciplinarity of research, and, secondly, an accent on intended (or at least claimed) practical results. In fact, the trends have been established decades ago but new quality was reached towards the beginning of the 21st century. Thus, natural sciences started to merge with the humanities and applied research was involved in advance of new and emerging technologies. This development requires assimilating basic cognitive results if they are sufficiently reliable. As perspectives, we discuss at more lengths four actual challenges: the necessity to implement gaze contacts in video-based conferences and distant communication; classical problem of sensus communis: evolutionary models of cognitive organization; possible methodological drawbacks in the recent brain-mapping studies of lexical representations while listening to orally presented narratives.