What is cognition?

Cognition is the process of thinking and knowing. It involves multiple complex mental functions, including: visual, sensory, and emotional processing, language, reasoning, problem solving, attention, and memory. Cognition requires the coordinated effort of the entire brain.

Cognition includes many of the ways we use our brain as a tool of our intellect, or intellectual (thinking) functioning. These functions include perception and the ability to learn new material, to remember what we have learned, to learn language, to reason and to work with abstract ideas and thoughts, and to make judgments.