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

在过去的十年里，思维和推理的研究取得了巨大的进展，对类比思维、因果思维、分类思维和创造性思维的神经、计算和潜在认知机制进行了大量的研究。利用功能磁共振成像，研究人员发现了许多涉及类比思维、因果思维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。功能磁共振成像的另一种选择是功能性近红外光谱分析(FNIRS)，即在头部放置发光二极管阵列，监测充氧和脱氧血液的数量。FNIRS提供的时间分辨率比fMRI快得多，但记录的信息类型相同。此外，fNIRS的空间分辨率在涉及更高水平认知的区域特别敏感，因此NIRS是理想的方法，建议做的是确定这些位置的激活顺序，这将使我们能够形成类比思维的过程模型。此外，范畴思维在该模型中扮演着重要的角色，我们还将对范畴思维的时间进程进行实验，特别是对颞叶皮质和DLPFC的相互作用进行实验。这将使我们能够区分不同的推理模型，并提供更完整的类比和创造性思维的说明，这是使用其他方法无法实现的。这项工作的结果将使在科学、文学和话语中进行推理成为可能。

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.