A major shift is happening within neurophysiology: a population doctrine is drawing level with the single-neuron doctrine that has long dominated the field. Population-level ideas have so far had their greatest impact in motor neuroscience, but they hold great promise for resolving open questions in cognition as well. Here, we codify the population doctrine and survey recent work that leverages this view to specifically probe cognition. Our discussion is organized around five core concepts that provide a foundation for population-level thinking: (1) state spaces, (2) manifolds, (3) coding dimensions, (4) subspaces, and (5) dynamics. The work we review illustrates the progress and promise that population-level thinking holds for cognitive neuroscience—for delivering new insight into attention, working memory, decision-making, executive function, learning, and reward processing.

神经生理学内部正在发生重大转变：群体学说正在与长期主导该领域的单神经元学说持平。迄今为止，群体层面的想法对运动神经科学产生了最大的影响，但它们也为解决认知中的悬而未决的问题带来了巨大的希望。在这里，我们编纂了人口学说，并调查了利用这一观点来专门探讨认知的近期工作。我们的讨论围绕五个核心概念进行组织，这些概念为群体层面的思维提供了基础：（1）状态空间，（2）流形，（3）编码维度，（4）子空间和（5）动态。我们回顾的工作展示了群体水平思维对于认知神经科学的进展和前景——为注意力、工作记忆、决策、执行功能、学习和奖励处理提供新的见解。