Cognitive infocommunications (CogInfoCom) is an interdisciplinary field that targets engineering applications based on emergent synergies between ICT and the cognitive sciences. The unique perspective of CogInfoCom enables researchers to focus on both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of cognitive capabilities in application areas where humans are becoming increasingly entangled with and dependent on intelligent networked services. An international conference on the field has been held every year since 2010, and the two most recent events have been supported by the IEEE. In this paper, we provide an overview of the various research directions which have been represented at the conference series, and which have as a result gained strong relevance to CogInfoCom during the past few years.