Loading…

Inferior parietal cortex represents relational structures for explicit transitive inference

Abstract The human brain is distinguished by its ability to perform explicit logical reasoning like transitive inference. This study investigated the functional role of the inferior parietal cortex in transitive inference with functional MRI. Participants viewed premises describing abstract relation...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2024-04, Vol.34 (4)
Main Authors: Xu, Biman, Wu, Jing, Xiao, Haoyun, Münte, Thomas F, Ye, Zheng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract The human brain is distinguished by its ability to perform explicit logical reasoning like transitive inference. This study investigated the functional role of the inferior parietal cortex in transitive inference with functional MRI. Participants viewed premises describing abstract relations among items. They accurately recalled the relationship between old pairs of items, effectively inferred the relationship between new pairs of items, and discriminated between true and false relationships for new pairs. First, the inferior parietal cortex, but not the hippocampus or lateral prefrontal cortex, was associated with transitive inference. The inferior parietal activity and functional connectivity were modulated by inference (new versus old pairs) and discrimination (true versus false pairs). Moreover, the new/old and true/false pairs were decodable from the inferior parietal representation. Second, the inferior parietal cortex represented an integrated relational structure (ordered and directed series). The inferior parietal activity was modulated by serial position (larger end versus center pairs). The inferior parietal representation was modulated by symbolic distance (adjacent versus distant pairs) and direction (preceding versus following pairs). It suggests that the inferior parietal cortex may flexibly integrate observed relations into a relational structure and use the relational structure to infer unobserved relations and discriminate between true and false relations.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhae137