Cognitive science
The term "cognitive science" was coined by Christopher Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on the Lighthill report, which concerned the then-current state of Artificial Intelligence research. In the same decade, the journal "Cognitive Science" and the Cognitive Science Society were founded. The founding meeting of the Cognitive Science Society was held at the University of California, San Diego in 1979, which resulted in cognitive science becoming an internationally visible enterprise. In 1972, Hampshire College started the first undergraduate education program in Cognitive Science, led by Neil Stillings. In 1982, with assistance from Professor Stillings, Vassar College became the first institution in the world to grant an undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science. In 1986, the first Cognitive Science Department in the world was founded at the University of California, San Diego.
Social cognitive neuroscience
In the year 2000, the term "social cognitive neuroscience" was coined by Matthew Lieberman and Kevin Oschner, who are from social and cognitive psychology backgrounds, respectively. This was done to integrate and brand the isolated labs doing research on the neural bases of social cognition. Also in the year 2000, Elizabeth Phelps and colleagues published the first fMRI study on social cognition, specifically on race evaluations. The adoption of fMRI, a less expensive and noninvasive neuroimaging modality, induced explosive growth in the field. In 2001, the first academic conference on social cognitive neuroscience was held at University of California, Los Angeles. The mid-2000s saw the emergence of academic societies related to the field ("Social and Affective Neuroscience Society, Society for Social Neuroscience"), as well as peer-reviewed journals specialized for the field ("Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Social Neuroscience"). In the 2000s and beyond, labs conducting social cognitive neuroscience research proliferated throughout Europe, North America, East Asia, Australasia, and South America.