An investigation of the network of brain based and cognitive mechanisms involved in analogy, creativity, and categorization

在过去的十年里，关于思维和推理的研究取得了巨大的进展，对类比、因果、分类和创造性思维所涉及的神经、计算和潜在认知机制进行了大量研究。利用功能磁共振成像，研究人员发现了一些涉及类比、因果和创造性思维的关键部位。不幸的是，仍然很难确定不同区域被激活的顺序，也很难使用参与者移动或说话的任务。 功能性近红外光谱（fNIRS）是功能性磁共振成像的一种替代方法，它将发光二极管阵列放置在头部，监测含氧和脱氧血液的量。fNIRS提供比fMRI快得多的时间分辨率，但记录相同类型的信息。 此外，fNIRS的空间分辨率在涉及高水平认知的区域特别敏感，因此NIRS是理想的，建议做的是确定这些位点的激活顺序，这将使我们能够制定类比思维的过程模型。 此外，范畴思维在模型中发挥着重要作用，我们还将对范畴思维的时间过程进行实验，特别是颞叶皮质和DLPFC的相互作用。这将使我们能够区分不同的推理模型，并提供一个更完整的类比和创造性思维的帐户，这是不可能使用其他方法。这项工作的结果将使科学，文学和话语的推理受益。

Research on thinking and reasoning has made tremendous progress over the last decade with much research on the neural, computational, and underlying cognitive mechanisms involved in analogical, causal, categorical and creative thinking. Using fMRI, researchers have discovered a number of key sites involved in analogical, causal, and creative thinking. Unfortunately it is still difficult to determine the order in which different regions are activated and to use tasks in which participants move or speak. An alternative to fMRI is functional Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy (fNIRS) in which arrays of light emitting diodes are placed on the head that monitor the amount of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood. fNIRS provides much faster temporal resolution than fMRI yet records the same type of information. Furthermore spatial resolution of fNIRS is particularly sensitive in regions involved in higher level cognition Thus NIRS is ideal for propose to do is determine the order of activation of these sites that will allow us to formulate a process model of analogical thinking. In addition, categorical thinking plays an important role in the model and we will also conduct experiments on the time course of categorical thinking, particularly the interaction of the temporal cortex and the DLPFC. This will allow us to distinguish between different models of reasoning and provide a more complete account of analogical and creative thought that was not possible using other methods The results of this work will make it possible to benefit reasoning in science, literature, ands discourse.