Brain, Mind and Media Neuroscience Meets Media Psychology

Media Psychology is emerging as a transdisciplinary research field. Scholars from psychology, communication, pedagogy, computer science, and other disciplines aim for a deeper understanding of why and how people use media and of how today's media landscape influences the human mind and our social lives. While scholars in other sub-fields of psychology have made serious inroads in integrating neuroscientific reasoning in studying the human mind, it is only recently that cognitive neuroscience has entered the field of media psychology. There are many reasons for this observation, but one possible explanation stands out and warrants a more detailed discussion in this introduction to a special issue on "Brain, Mind, and Media: Neuroscience Meets Media Psychology"; a resistance to the notion of mind-brain supervenience and a belief that investigations at the level of brain mechanisms are not needed for theory development and accurate predictions in media psychology and communication science. In order to understand the roots of this resistance and belief, it is helpful to remind ourselves of the philosophical foundation of neuroscientific reasoning from a historical perspective.