摘要：SummaryCognitive processes—from basic sensory analysis to language understanding—are typically contextualized. While the importance of considering context for understanding cognition has long been recognized in psychology and philosophy, it has not yet had much impact on cognitive neuroscience research, where cognition is often studied in decontextualized paradigms. Here, we present examples of recent studies showing that context changes the neural basis of diverse cognitive processes, including perception, attention, memory, and language. Within the domains of perception and language, we review neuroimaging results showing that context interacts with stimulus processing, changes activity in classical perception and language regions, and recruits additional brain regions that contribute crucially to naturalistic perception and language. We discuss how contextualized cognitive neuroscience will allow for discovering new principles of the mind and brain.Graphical abstractDisplay OmittedHighlights•The effect of context is pervasive and present at multiple levels of processing•Context both facilitates and changes cognitive processing•Context can be incorporated and manipulated in tightly controlled experiments•Contextualizing cognitive neuroscience research increases its relevanceBiological Sciences; Cognitive Neuroscience; Neuroscience; Sensory Neuroscience
