Overall, declaring a cognitive science major allows students to more extensively study a diverse range of subject areas, such as philosophy, psychology, biology, neuroscience, mathematics, linguistics, anthropology, and artificial intelligence, to name a few. Being afforded the opportunity to investigate these areas of knowledge, all in one major, gives students a chance to be immersed in the study of the mind, its cognitive processes, such as attention, reasoning, memory, language, and motor control, and how these processes influence learning, communication, and subjective experience, from a variety of perspectives. Accumulating foundational knowledge from these disciplines also allows students to cultivate critical thinking and problem-solving abilities during their undergraduate years, which sufficiently prepares them for graduate school, prospective careers, and other future endeavors.
Drawing upon my experiences as a cognitive science student, a number of course requirements have left a lasting impact, aligning well with my deep fascination in studying and understanding the underlying processes that generate cognitive phenomena. To start, I very much enjoyed investigating electrochemical signaling and neurocommunication in my Biopsychology course, in addition to the elicited cellular responses in different regions of the brain and their implications. It was truly fascinating to learn about the brain’s biological pathways that ultimately constitute thought, action, behavior, and experience. Further, in Cognition, I examined more abstract approaches to studying the mind, such as the construction of mental representations and the cognitive processes involved in the production of thoughts, problem-solving, decision-making, and reasoning abilities. In particular, taking Brains, Minds, and Consciousness allowed me to examine elements of both the brain and the mind, in addition to how they interact to produce conscious, subconscious, and unconscious behaviors.
Concerning some program electives that I took, the topics covered in Behavioral Pharmacology were extremely interesting and applicable to my envisioned future career in psychiatry, in which I learned more about neuropharmacological activity in the brain and behavioral influences that can lead to substance abuse, addiction, tolerance, and dependence. In particular, I was intrigued by our investigation of context-dependent behaviors, the reinforcement of substance use behaviors in these contexts, and their impact on tolerance and treatment outcome. I also was captivated by my studies in Brain Injury and Psychopathology, which encompassed the neurological abnormalities and behavioral changes frequently seen in patients suffering from traumatic brain injury, and the short-term and long-term implications of injury. Another captivating course I took was Semiotics and the Study of Meaning, which examined signs and sign systems, their meaning and significance, and their applications in a variety of contexts, such as in language, communication and signaling, therapeutic intervention, writing, music, film, and art. Logic, Language, and Thought was another course that I thoroughly enjoyed, which studied the nature of reason and the many limits to human acquisition of knowledge, understanding, and reason from a logical, mathematical, and philosophical perspective. All in all, my experience as a cognitive science major has provided me with the opportunity to take interesting courses from a variety of disciplines, making my college experience remarkable and invaluable.