Neuroimaging of analogical reasoning

描述（由申请人提供）：人类表现出使用类比对广泛领域的新情况进行推断的能力。虽然类比推理是人类认知的一个重要方面，但它并没有得到认知神经科学家的大量关注。在这个项目中，我们将使用功能性神经影像学来研究推理的组成过程及其神经基质。先前的理论和实证研究已经确定了理解类比的两个关键过程：整合多种关系的能力和抑制显著的分散注意力的信息。在3个拟议的实验中，这些因素将在类比问题中被系统地操纵。在每个实验中，参与者将使用事件相关设计在fMRI扫描期间解决这些问题。这种方法将使我们能够识别这些不同的过程，有助于类比推理的神经基板。这三项研究使用了不同的领域，以确定是否存在类比推理的一般机制。尽管先前的研究已经证明，前额叶皮层对推理能力（包括类比）很重要，但拟议的研究将揭示有助于类比推理的不同认知过程，以及它们在人脑中的组织方式。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Humans exhibit the ability to use analogy to make inferences about novel situations across a wide range of domains. Although analogical reasoning is an important aspect of human cognition, it has not received a great deal of attention from cognitive neuroscientists. In this project we will investigate the component processes in reasoning and their neural substrates using functional neuroimaging. Prior theoretical and empirical work has identified 2 critical processes in understanding analogies; the ability to integrate multiple relations and the inhibition of salient distracting information. In 3 proposed experiments, these factors will be systematically manipulated across analogy problems. In each experiment, participants will solve these problems during fMRI scanning using an event-related design. This approach will allow us to identify the neural substrates of these different processes that contribute to analogical reasoning. The 3 proposed studies use different domains in order to determine whether there are general mechanisms of analogical reasoning. Although prior research has demonstrated that prefrontal cortex is important for reasoning abilities, including analogy, the proposed research will shed light on the distinct cognitive processes that contribute to analogical reasoning, and how they are organized in the human brain.