Cognitive neuroscience has emerged from the interdisciplinary need to understand the complex relations between neural systems and behavior. In the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Dr. Eslinger systematically studies both normal subjects and patients who have acquired brain lesions to limbic and cortical structures. Visual and auditory organization in the normal brain is examined with specialized techniques such as tachistoscopic analysis and dichotic listening. The cerebral lesions of neurologic patients are localized from CT and MRI scans according to standarized neuroimaging procedures for the purpose of comparing the effects of different locations of damage on diverse cognitive experimental tasks. Major research programs include: 1) the neural substrate of memory, focusing particularly on the role of the amygdala, hippocampal formation and frontal lobe; 2) the organization of pattern recognition (reading and facial recognition) and spatial perception in upper and lower visual association of cortices; 3) the fractionation of the frontal lobes into regions specialized for response initiation and the executive abilities of decision-making and social judgement; and 4) cognitive architectures of right and left cerebral hemispheres as revealed by the Wada (intracarotid sodium amytal) procedure and effects of temporal lobectomy for intractable epilepsy.