Abstract
The capacity to learn new information and manipulate it for efficient retrieval has long been studied through reasoning paradigms, which also has applicability to the study of social behavior. Humans can learn about the linear order within groups using reasoning, and the success of such reasoning may vary according to affective state, such as depression. We investigated the neural basis of these latter findings using functional neuroimaging. Using BDI-II criteria, 14 non-depressed (ND) and 12 mildly depressed volunteers took part in a linear-order reasoning task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. The hippocampus, parietal, and prefrontal cortices were activated during the task, in accordance with previous studies. In the learning phase and in the test phase, greater activation of the parietal cortex was found in the depressed group, which may be a compensatory mechanism in order to reach the same behavioral performance as the ND group, or evidence for a different reasoning strategy in the depressed group.
Highlights
A fundamental ability in both humans and animals is the capacity to flexibly learn new information and to recall and manipulate that information for future use (Simons and Spiers, 2003; Manns and Eichenbaum, 2006)
Humans can learn about rank orders within groups of people using linear-order reasoning, and the success of such reasoning may depend on affective state, sub-clinical depression (Sedek and Von Hecker, 2004)
Hippocampal, parietal, and prefrontal cortical activations during the task provide corroborative evidence for a network of regions associated with reasoning found in previous studies (Christoff et al, 2001; Acuna et al, 2002; Knauff et al, 2002; Goel and Dolan, 2004; Schubotz et al, 2004; Fangmeier et al, 2006; Greene et al, 2006; Wendelken et al, 2008)
Summary
A fundamental ability in both humans and animals is the capacity to flexibly learn new information and to recall and manipulate that information for future use (Simons and Spiers, 2003; Manns and Eichenbaum, 2006) Both humans and animals can flexibly make novel inferences from the information provided (Dickins, 2005; Vasconcelos, 2008). This process is often studied through linear-order reasoning paradigms (Potts, 1972; Sternberg, 1980), in which participants learn A > B and B > C; evidence of reasoning occurs when they can rearrange the incoming information into a coherent representation, or mental model, in order to infer that A > C. We use functional MRI to investigate how brain activation during execution of a different reasoning task, that is, linear-order construction, might be altered in the brain, especially in parietal cortical areas, when individuals are in a state of sub-clinical depression
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