Cognitive science is the study of the human mind and brain, focusing on how the mind represents and manipulates knowledge and how mental representations and processes are realized in the brain. Conceiving of the mind as an abstract computing device instantiated in the brain, cognitive scientists endeavor to understand the mental computations underlying cognitive functioning and how these computations are implemented by neural tissue. Cognitive science has emerged at the interface of several disciplines. Central among these are cognitive psychology, linguistics, and portions of computer science and artificial intelligence; other important components derive from work in the neurosciences, philosophy, and anthropology. This diverse ancestry has brought into cognitive science several different perspectives and methodologies. Cognitive scientists endeavor to unite such varieties of perspectives around the central goal of characterizing the structure of human intellectual functioning. It is this common object of inquiry that integrates traditionally separate disciplines into the unified field of cognitive science.