American scientists from Columbia University in New York have discovered for the first time exactly what processes occur in the brain during logical reasoning. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Nature.
The team used recordings from more than 3,000 neurons from 17 volunteers receiving treatment for epilepsy who agreed to an invasive monitoring procedure in which electrodes are placed in brain tissue.
Patients were given an experiment in which they had to react to objects appearing on a screen and press the necessary buttons. From time to time, the correspondence of the buttons and objects changed, forcing people to adapt to the new rules.
Currently, scientists are studying the neural reactions that occur when participants make inferences and use logical thinking.
The team then converted the recordings of the activity of thousands of neurons into geometric representations. The resulting figures, according to the researchers, were incredibly complex; they turned out to be impossible to imagine in detail as three-dimensional structures, but they could be described using mathematical methods.
Scientists have created highly simplified versions of these geometric objects for further visualization.
When the researchers compared brain activity patterns in situations where subjects had successful outcomes and in situations where outcomes were unsuccessful, dramatic differences emerged.
“We observed transitions in certain populations of neurons during learning from disorganized representations to these beautiful geometric structures associated with the ability to reason logically,” said the authors of the discovery.
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Source: Gazeta
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