Topics of interest for cognitive linguistics include the structural characteristics of natural language categorization (such as prototypicality, metaphor, mental imagery, and cognitive models), the explicit characterization of linguistic meaning in terms appropriate to its nature (such as trajector/landmark or figure/ground organization, profiling, grounding, viewpoint, scope of predication, etc.), the functional principles of linguistic organization (such as iconicity and naturalness), the conceptual interface between syntax and semantics, the experiential and pragmatic background of language-in-use, the nature and description of linguistic constructions, the conceptual basis and structural organization of signed languages, the relation of language to thought and to human culture(s), the nature of language in its evolutionary and historical perspectives, the way that language is acquired via cognitive, communicative and general social experience, and the relationship between language and non-linguistic aspects of communication such as gesture.

Neuroinformatics integrates and analyzes diverse data across scales, techniques, and species to understand the brain.