The same area of the brain seems crucial for the ability to face unexpected problems and draw logical deductions from situations.
A group of British neuroscientists has identified a brain area that supports the ability of the brain of face logical reasoning and unravel new and never faced problems Before. He did so by studying how brain lesions compared these skills in patients affected by strokes or brain tumors compared to healthy people. The research was published on Brain.
Studies of not easy realization. Brain damage can alter the way a person thinks, speaks, feels or moves, and studying what happens in an area affected by an injury is a scientifically rigorous method to understand what the part of the brain is for. However, this type of studies requires having large numbers of patients with the same type of brain injury, and this type of data is available only in a few research centers.
A sometimes deceptive exam. Thus, usually the studies for mapping brain function take place on groups of healthy subjects subjected to cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). A technique that detects which areas are activated during the execution of a task and which, despite being very used, sometimes finds a simple correlation between the “ignition” of a brain area and a certain task, and not a cause-effect relationship.
Cognitive tests. In the new study, the scientists of the University College London and of the University College London Hospital analyzed 247 patients with focal unilateral brain lesions (in a single well -localized area) or in the right or left front or in the rear regions in the brain. Another 81 volunteers are served as controls.
Patients underwent two specially developed tests. The first was a task of verbal analogue reasoning in which he asked to find relationships between words to solve problems (for example: If Sarah is smarter than Diana and Sarah is smarter than Heather, Diane is smarter than Heather?). The second was a task of non -verbal deductive reasoningin which images, shapes or numbers had to be used to understand logical patterns (for example: To which series of numbers 1, 2, 3 is more similar – at 5, 6, 7 or 6, 5, 7?).
Found! An area in particular was essential for both tasks, since patients who had injuries in this area committed 15% more errors compared to patients without injury. It is the Right front of the brainstrictly involved both in reasoning and in fluid intelligencethe ability to solve problems without previous experience.
The importance of this area becomes even more evident when it is damaged by a disease or an acute event. In addition to the interest in understanding how the brain works, the new developed tests will serve to make the clinical diagnosis for patients with dysfunctions of the front lobe more precise.
