At the core of reasoning: Dissociating deductive and non-deductive load.

ABSTRACT: In recent years, neuroimaging methods have been used to investigate how the human mind carries out deductive reasoning. According to some, the neural substrate of language is integral to deductive reasoning. According to others, deductive reasoning is supported by a language-independent distributed network including left frontopolar and frontomedial cortices. However, it has been suggested that activity in these frontal regions might instead reflect non-deductive factors such as working memory load and general cognitive difficulty. To address this issue, 20 healthy volunteers participated in an fMRI experiment in which they evaluated matched simple and complex deductive and non-deductive arguments in a 2 × 2 design. The contrast of complex versus simple deductive trials resulted in a patte

SUBMITTER: Coetzee JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6866402 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature