Dealing specifically with the origins and development of human language, this book is based on a selection of materials from a recent international conference held at the Center of Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. The significance of the volume is that it testifies to paradigmatic changes currently in progress. The changes are from the typical emphasis on the syntactic properties of language and cognition to an analysis of biological and cultural factors which make these formal properties possible. The chapters provide in-depth coverage of such topics as new theoretical foundations for cognitive research, phylogenetic prerequisites and ontogenesis of language, and environmental and cultural forces of development. Some of the arguments and lines of research are relatively well-known; others deal with completely new interdisciplinary approaches. As a result, some of the authors' conclusions are in part, rather counterintuitive, such as the hypothesis that language as a system of formal symbolic transformations may be in fact a very late phenomenon located in the sphere of socio-cultural and not biological development. While highly debatable, this and other hypotheses of the book may well define research questions for the future.

This book reports on theoretical and experimental research answering key questions in neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and cognitive research. It gives a special emphasis on findings achieved within the territory of the former U.S.S.R, which has remained largely unknown to an international readership. The volume gathers authoritative studies on cognitive development, consciousness, attention and perception. It covers research on eye movements, language, speech and semantics, emotion, as well as brain functional states, and a variety of decision-making processes. It also highlights important advances in cognitive robotics and artificial intelligence, discussing brain-computer interfaces and other practically-relevant technologies. It includes studies on human subjects, in both healthy and disease conditions, and investigations on the molecular mechanisms of cognition in animal models. Chapters are based on invited lectures and peer-reviewed contributions to the 9th International Conference on Cognitive Sciences, Intercognsci-2020, held on October 10-16, 2020, in Moscow. The conference was organized by the Interregional Association of Cognitive Studies, with the participation of the Pavlov Society for Neurophysiology and Higher Nervous Activity, and supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and a number of the north eastern European research institutions. All in all, this book provides cognitive scientists around the world with a timely snapshot of interdisciplinary research and cutting-edge models, and a major source of inspiration for future collaborations in the areas of artificial intelligence and cognitive neuroscience.