The desire to understand human and animal behavior in terms of nervous system structure and function is longstanding. Historically, researchers and scholars have approached this task from a variety of disciplines, including medicine, biology, psychology, philosophy, and physiology.

The field of neuroscience emerged as an interdisciplinary approach, combining techniques and perspectives from these disciplines, as well as emerging fields such as computation and cognitive science, to yield new insights into the workings of the nervous system and behavior.