The neural mechanism of human numerical inductive reasoning process: A combined ERP and fMRI study

Peipeng Liang*, Ning Zhong, Shengfu Lu, Jiming LIU, Yiyu Yao, Kuncheng Li, Yanhui Yang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceedingConference proceedingpeer-review

22 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Inductive reasoning is one of the most important higher level cognitive functions of the human brain, and we still know very little about its neural mechanism. In the present study, event-related potential (ERP) and event-related fMRI are used to explore the dynamic spatiotemporal characteristics of inductive reasoning process. We hypothesize that the process of numerical inductive reasoning is partially dissociable over time and space. A typical task of inductive reasoning, function-finding, was adopted. Induction tasks and calculation tasks were performed in the experiments, respectively. ERP results suggest that the time course of inductive reasoning process is partially dissociable as the following three sub-processes: number recognition (the posterior P100 and N200), strategy formation (P300) and hypothesis generation and verification (the positive slow waves). fMRI results show many activations, including prefrontal gyrus (BA 6), inferior parietal lobule (BA 7, 40), and occipital cortex (BA 18). After the respective discussions, the two kinds of data are combined qualitatively, then the dynamic spatiotemporal characteristic of inductive reasoning process are depicted using a conceptual figure. This study is a preliminary effort towards deeply understanding the dynamic information processing mechanism of human inductive reasoning process.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationWeb Intelligence Meets Brain Informatics - First WICI International Workshop, WImBI 2006, Revised Selected and Invited Papers
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages223-243
Number of pages21
ISBN (Print)9783540770275
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2007
Event1st WICI International Workshop on Web Intelligence meets Brain Informatics, WImBI 2006 - Beijing, China
Duration: 15 Dec 200616 Dec 2006

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume4845 LNAI
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference1st WICI International Workshop on Web Intelligence meets Brain Informatics, WImBI 2006
Country/TerritoryChina
CityBeijing
Period15/12/0616/12/06

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science(all)

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