The gamma band activity and relational reasoning

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The gamma band activity and relational reasoning Aneta Brzezicka1*, J. Kamiński2, M. Gola1 and A. Wróbel1, 2 1 Department of Psychology, Warsaw School of Social Psychology, Poland 2 Department of Neurophysiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Poland Several studies using similar tasks and neuroimaging techniques have shown that reasoning is associated with bilateral prefrontal (PFC) and posterior parietal cortices activation. Here, we investigated the brain EEG activity (with special interest on gamma band) during two types of cognitive tasks –memory task and memory with reasoning. The first task required the subjects to memorize three pairs of unrelated elements (e.g. D and S; F and C; E and R), whereas in the second the subjects had to infer about relations between presented elements (e.g. after presentations of: A > B; B > C; C > D; subject was requested to answer questions concerning relationship between elements which were not previously presented, e.g. A > C?). The first phases of both tasks, in which subjects were required to only maintain the information (memory task) or to create the linear order (reasoning task), were used for this analysis. The ICA algorithm was applied to the data and resulted with 61 components, which were later clustered using k-means method. Two clusters revealed significant differences between memory and reasoning tasks in gamma band. The first of these clusters was located in frontal sites. The localization of the second cluster was more distributed and covered parietal as well as frontal sites. The first cluster showed increased gamma band activity (as shown by event related spectra perturbation, ERSD) in working memory tasks comparing to reasoning task. In the second cluster the gamma band activity was higher during the reasoning task. These results are in line with previous findings from studies with brain-damaged patients and neuroimaging experiments showing that logical reasoning is implemented in cortical networks consisting of parts of the fronto-temporal cortex and the posterior parietal cortex. It was found that during relational and conditional reasoning, an occipital-parietal-frontal network was activated. This suggests that spatial processing of relations might be a key information in mental models constructed during reasoning. We hypothesize also that the two clusters appearing in frontal and parietal locations represent the results of the activity of different information processing streams. Conference: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bodrum, Turkey, 1 Sep - 5 Sep, 2008. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Brain Electrical Oscillations in Cognition Citation: Brzezicka A, Kamiński J, Gola M and Wróbel A (2008). The gamma band activity and relational reasoning. Conference Abstract: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.01.118 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 03 Dec 2008; Published Online: 03 Dec 2008. * Correspondence: Aneta Brzezicka, Department of Psychology, Warsaw School of Social Psychology, Granz, Poland, aneta.brzezicka@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Aneta Brzezicka J. Kamiński M. Gola A. Wróbel Google Aneta Brzezicka J. Kamiński M. Gola A. Wróbel Google Scholar Aneta Brzezicka J. Kamiński M. Gola A. Wróbel PubMed Aneta Brzezicka J. Kamiński M. Gola A. Wróbel Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.