Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system.

Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics, medicine (including neurology), genetics, and allied disciplines including philosophy, physics, and psychology. It also exerts influence on other fields, such as neuroeducation and neurolaw. The term neurobiology is usually used interchangeably with the term neuroscience, although the former refers specifically to the biology of the nervous system, whereas the latter refers to the entire science of the nervous system.

Rarely in the history of neuroscience has a single illustration been as influential as the cytoarchitectonic map of the human brain published by Korbinian Brodmann in his monograph from 1909. The map presents the segregation of the cerebral cortex into 43 areas, as visible in cell body-stained histological sections. More importantly, Brodmann provided a comparative neuroanatomical approach and discussed ontogenetic and pathological aspects as well as structural-functional correlations. One hundred years later, a large number of neuroscientists still use Brodmann's map for localizing neuroimaging data obtained in the living human brain.

Neuroscientists have long sought to subdivide the human brain into a mosaic of anatomically and functionally distinct, spatially contiguous areas (cortical areas and subcortical nuclei), as a prerequisite for understanding how the brain works. Areas differ from their neighbours in microstructural architecture, functional specialization, connectivity with other areas, and/or orderly intra-area topographic organization (for example, the map of visual space in visual cortical areas) ¹⁾. ²⁾ 3³⁾.