A role for the right prefrontal and bilateral parietal cortex in four-term transitive reasoning: an fMRI study with abstract linear syllogism tasks.

Previous imaging studies have identified many brain regions activated during reasoning, but there are differences among the findings concerning specific regions engaged in reasoning and the contribution of language areas. Also, little is known about the relation between task complexity and neural activation during reasoning. The present fMRI study investigated brain activity during complex four-term transitive reasoning with abstract material (determinate or partially indeterminate) and compared the resulting images to those obtained during a memorization task. The memory condition required subjects to memorize unrelated elements whereas the reasoning conditions required them to integrate information from premises and to infer relations between elements. After contrasting the two kinds of reasoning conditions with the memory condition we found that right prefrontal and bilateral parietal regions are specifically activated during reasoning. We also demonstrated that different reasoning requirements--the possibility of constructing one (determined reasoning) versus several (undetermined reasoning) models of a situation during task solving--lead to different patterns of brain activity, with higher prefrontal (PFC) activity accompanying undetermined reasoning. We interpret the PFC activity as a reflection of simultaneous maintenance and manipulation of information in reasoning. These findings provide new evidence that specific forms of reasoning (abstract and undetermined) demand recruitment of right PFC and hemispheric coordination and lend new support to the mental model theory of relational reasoning.

[1]  Jérôme Prado,et al.  Overcoming Perceptual Features in Logical Reasoning: A Parametric Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study , 2007, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[2]  C Leth-Steensen,et al.  A model of response time effects in symbolic comparison. , 2000, Psychological review.

[3]  Vinod Goel Evidence for Dual Neural Pathways for Syllogistic Reasoning , 2003 .

[4]  P. Johnson-Laird Mental models and deduction , 2001, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[5]  L. Rips Cognitive Processes in Propositional Reasoning. , 1983 .

[6]  R. Sternberg Representation and Process in Linear Syllogistic Reasoning. , 1980 .

[7]  Karl J. Friston Testing for anatomically specified regional effects , 1997, Human brain mapping.

[8]  R. Dolan,et al.  Dissociation of Mechanisms Underlying Syllogistic Reasoning , 2000, NeuroImage.

[9]  Herbert H. Clark,et al.  Linguistic processes in deductive reasoning. , 1969 .

[10]  G. F. Tremblay,et al.  The Prefrontal Cortex , 1989, Neurology.

[11]  P. Johnson-Laird,et al.  Reasoning, Models, and Images: Behavioral Measures and Cortical Activity , 2003, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[12]  Markus Knauff,et al.  A Neuro-Cognitive Theory of Deductive Relational Reasoning with Mental Models and Visual Images , 2009, Spatial Cogn. Comput..

[13]  Emiliano Macaluso,et al.  Conditional and syllogistic deductive tasks dissociate functionally during premise integration , 2010, Human brain mapping.

[14]  P. Johnson-Laird,et al.  Propositional reasoning by model. , 1992, Psychological review.

[15]  Vinod Goel,et al.  A role for right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in reasoning about indeterminate relations , 2009, Neuropsychologia.

[16]  Leslie G. Ungerleider,et al.  An area specialized for spatial working memory in human frontal cortex. , 1998, Science.

[17]  Vladimir M. Sloutsky,et al.  fMRI Evidence for a Three-Stage Model of Deductive Reasoning , 2006, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[18]  S. Phillips,et al.  Processing capacity defined by relational complexity: implications for comparative, developmental, and cognitive psychology. , 1998, The Behavioral and brain sciences.

[19]  James K. Kroger,et al.  Recruitment of anterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in human reasoning: a parametric study of relational complexity. , 2002, Cerebral cortex.

[20]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  A unified statistical approach for determining significant signals in images of cerebral activation , 1996, Human brain mapping.

[21]  J. Fuster Prefrontal Cortex , 2018 .

[22]  P. Johnson-Laird,et al.  Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness , 1985 .

[23]  J. Donoghue,et al.  Frontal and parietal lobe activation during transitive inference in humans. , 2002, Cerebral cortex.

[24]  Oshin Vartanian,et al.  Hemispheric specialization in human prefrontal cortex for resolving certain and uncertain inferences. , 2007, Cerebral cortex.

[25]  K. Holyoak,et al.  A System for Relational Reasoning in Human Prefrontal Cortex , 1999 .

[26]  James R. Booth,et al.  The Brain Network for Deductive Reasoning: A Quantitative Meta-analysis of 28 Neuroimaging Studies , 2011, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[27]  James K. Kroger,et al.  Cross-modal and cross-temporal association in neurons of frontal cortex , 2000, Nature.

[28]  Simon Dymond,et al.  Neural correlates of relational reasoning and the symbolic distance effect: involvement of parietal cortex , 2010, Neuroscience.

[29]  J L Lancaster,et al.  Automated Talairach Atlas labels for functional brain mapping , 2000, Human brain mapping.

[30]  Vinod Goel,et al.  Anatomy of deductive reasoning , 2007, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[31]  M. L. Howe,et al.  Reasoning in middle childhood: a dynamic model of performance on transitivity tasks. , 1994, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[32]  R. Cabeza,et al.  Imaging Cognition II: An Empirical Review of 275 PET and fMRI Studies , 2000, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[33]  Vinod Goel,et al.  Differential involvement of left prefrontal cortexin inductive and deductive reasoning , 2004, Cognition.

[34]  Michael J. Martinez,et al.  Bias between MNI and Talairach coordinates analyzed using the ICBM‐152 brain template , 2007, Human brain mapping.

[35]  G. R. Potts Information Processing Strategies Used in the Encoding of Linear Orderings. , 1972 .

[36]  Vinod Goel,et al.  Cognitive Neuroscience of Thinking , 2009 .

[37]  Karl J. Friston,et al.  Statistical parametric maps in functional imaging: A general linear approach , 1994 .

[38]  U. von Hecker,et al.  Effects of subclinical depression and aging on generative reasoning about linear orders: same or different processing limitations? , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[39]  J. Jonides,et al.  Storage and executive processes in the frontal lobes. , 1999, Science.

[40]  R. Dolan,et al.  Functional neuroanatomy of three-term relational reasoning , 2001, Neuropsychologia.

[41]  K. Christoff,et al.  Prefrontal organization of cognitive control according to levels of abstraction , 2009, Brain Research.

[42]  P W Foos,et al.  Effect of presentation order on the construction of linear orders , 1975, Memory & cognition.

[43]  S. Phillips,et al.  Relational knowledge: the foundation of higher cognition , 2010, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[44]  Juan D Delius,et al.  Transitive responding in animals and humans: Exaptation rather than adaptation? , 1998, Behavioural Processes.

[45]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  Neuroimaging studies of working memory: , 2003, Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience.

[46]  Mark A. Sabol,et al.  Constructive Processes in Simple Linear-Order Problems. , 1976 .

[47]  J. Gabrieli,et al.  The frontopolar cortex and human cognition: Evidence for a rostrocaudal hierarchical organization within the human prefrontal cortex , 2000, Psychobiology.

[48]  Stephen Lawrie,et al.  Functional Specialization within Rostral Prefrontal Cortex (Area 10): A Meta-analysis , 2006, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[49]  L. Snyder,et al.  Neural correlates of executive control functions in the monkey , 2009, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[50]  Richard S. Frackowiak,et al.  Neural basis of generation of conclusions in elementary deduction , 2007, NeuroImage.

[51]  A. Cavanna,et al.  The precuneus: a review of its functional anatomy and behavioural correlates. , 2006, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[52]  B R Postle,et al.  "What"-Then-Where" in visual working memory: an event-related fMRI study. , 1999, Journal of cognitive neuroscience.