Did you you that, whilst neuroscientists confess they barely understand how the human brain works at a systemic level, cognitive science does have some elegant explanatory models for how various subsystems of our mind work, and sometimes neuroscience can provide supporting evidence for these models.
For example, fMRI shows that both topographical scene recognition, and the paralinguistic pattern-matching that recognises sarcasm, "happen" in the tiny parahippocampal place area (PPA) , part of the limbic system.
Given that the PPA also fires up when we're trying to recognise a social context, the "law of parsimony" leads us to conclude that the "template theories" of cognitive science are valid scientific explanations for exactly HOW our brains do pattern matching.
(This is a little piece of science writing by me, Adam Tiller)
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