The Cognitive Neural Mechanism of Human Inductive Reasoning: A Brain Informatics Perspective

Inductive reasoning is one of the most important higher level cognitive functions of the human brain. The premises in inductive reasoning are usually based on facts or observations, and constitute reasons for accepting the conclusion. Inductive reasoning is an open-ended process, that is to say, the conclusion induced from correct premises may be incorrect/ implausible. Inductive reasoning underlies many cognitive activities such as concept formation, problem solving, scientific discovery, etc., and has been extensively studied in philosophy, logic, psychology, and Artificial Intelligence(AI). However, its neural mechanism is still less investigated and understood. There have been some studies of human inductive reasoning using normal subjects (Christoff et al., 2001; Goel et al., 1997, 2000, 2004; Geake et al., 2005; Prabhakaran et al., 1997; Strange et al., 2001; Liang et al., 2007a, 2007b, in press; Zhong et al., in press; Lu et al., in press) and patients (Gazzaniga et al., 1985, 1988; Girelli et al., 2004; By Ning Zhong,1,2,3 Peipeng Liang,1,2,4 Kuncheng Li,2,4 Shengfu Lu,1,2 Yulin Qin,1,2,5 Jiming Liu,1,2,6 and Yiyu Yao1,2,7