A Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences has been established at the National Academy of Sciences in response to public policy needs that coincide with scientific developments in these fields. This Board will focus on improving policy decisions by drawing together the collective expertise of diverse fields of developmental psychology, social processes, perceptual and sensory sciences, biopsychology and biotechnology, neuroscience and computational sciences. A Board strengthens communications, broadens the databases, and makes scientific information more accessible to wider audiences. Board activities simultaneously improve research by probing issues from diverse perspectives. Because distinguished scientists volunteer their services as members of NAS-NRC Boards, such Boards become a mechanism for cross-fertilizing disparate research domains to inform public policy. A Board directly benefits science in a number of ways. Scientific disciplines, typically driven by the issues and methods of their respective fields, have yielded increasing productivity when jointly considering problems from an interdisciplinary approach. However, the mission-orientation of most government agencies has mitigated against mutually shared scientific planning. Thus, the benefits of such a Board include: (1) providing linkages across federal agencies and the separate behavioral, social, cognitive, sensory, and technology research communities; (2) involving nationally-prominent academic scientists in improvements and developments in the behavioral, cognitive, and sensory sciences; (3) providing a forum for information exchange relating to science and public policy; and (4) advancing behavioral, cognitive, and sensory sciences within the NAS-NRC and through the Board's activities with Congress and the diverse program offices and research programs across the federal complex. The Board seeks funding for its core activities from NSF.
