Abstract
Now that we know so much about where there is activity in the brain while people perform cognitive tasks, ‘The future’ explains that the next stage is to find out how that activity makes cognition possible. To do this we need to study that activity with methods that are sensitive to the temporal pattern of neuronal activity, but neither PET nor fMRI is well suited for the purpose. Methods currently available include: magneto-encephalography, recording with electrode arrays, recording from single neurons, and biologically plausible computational models. Future models will need to take into account both the fine and gross architecture of the brain and be more flexible and more biologically plausible.