Abstract
A wide range of essential reasoning tasks rely on contradiction identification, a cornerstone of human rationality, communication and debate founded on the inversion of the logical operators "Every" and "Some." A high-density electroencephalographic (EEG) study was performed in 11 normal young adults. The cerebral network involved in the identification of contradiction included the orbito-frontal and anterior-cingulate cortices and the temporo-polar cortices. The event-related dynamic of this network showed an early negative deflection lasting 500 ms after sentence presentation. This was followed by a positive deflection lasting 1.5 s, which was different for the two logical operators. A lesser degree of network activation (either in neuron number or their level of phase locking or both) occurred while processing statements with "Some," suggesting that this was a relatively simpler scenario with one example to be figured out, instead of the many examples or the absence of a counterexample searched for while processing statements with "Every." A self-generated reward system seemed to resonate the recruited circuitry when the contradictory task is successfully completed.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 4187-4197 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Human Brain Mapping |
Volume | 30 |
Issue number | 12 |
Early online date | 24 Jun 2009 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2009 |
Keywords
- adult
- algorithms
- brain
- brain mapping
- cognition
- electroencephalography
- female
- humans
- intelligence
- male
- neural pathways
- reward
- computer-assisted signal processing
- contradictory reasoning
- independent component analysis
- logical operators