AUTHOR=Papo David 

TITLE=How can we study reasoning in the brain?

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

VOLUME=Volume 9 - 2015

YEAR=2015

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00222

DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2015.00222

ISSN=1662-5161

ABSTRACT=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 spontaneous 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.‎