How can we study reasoning in the brain?

David Papo
2015 Frontiers in Human Neuroscience  
The brain did not develop a dedicated device for reasoning. This fact bears dramatic consequences. While for perceptuo-motor functions neural activity is shaped by the input's statistical properties, and processing is carried out at high speed in hardwired spatially segregated modules, in reasoning, neural activity is driven by internal dynamics and processing times, stages, and functional brain geometry are largely unconstrained a priori. Here, it is shown that the complex properties of
more » ... eous activity, which can be ignored in a short-lived event-related world, become prominent at the long time scales of certain forms of reasoning. It is argued that the neural correlates of reasoning should in fact be defined in terms of non-trivial generic properties of spontaneous brain activity, and that this implies resorting to concepts, analytical tools, and ways of designing experiments that are as yet non-standard in cognitive neuroscience. The implications in terms of models of brain activity, shape of the neural correlates, methods of data analysis, observability of the phenomenon, and experimental designs are discussed.
doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00222 pmid:25964755 pmcid:PMC4408754 fatcat:ktvxkvexp5ggxj2z5gzxtiev3e