This measure takes into account the number of different paths that the control flow can take, such as if statements, loops, and method calls. Each path increases the cognitive complexity of the method, making it more difficult to reason about and debug.
High cognitive complexity can be caused by overly complex logic, deeply nested conditional statements, or excessive use of control flow statements. It is important to keep cognitive complexity low in order to increase code readability and maintainability.
Tools like SonarQube can analyze code to identify methods with high cognitive complexity, helping developers to refactor and simplify their code.