Shifting from the perceptual brain to the logical brain: The neural impactof cognitive inhibition training

What happens in the human brain when the mind has to inhibit a perceptual p rocess in order to activate a logical reasoning process? Here, we use funct ional imaging to show the networks of brain areas involved in a deductive l ogic task performed twice by the same subjects, first with a perceptual bia s and then with a logical response following bias-inhibition training. The main finding is a striking shift in the cortical anatomy of reasoning from the posterior part of the brain (the ventral and dorsal pathways) to a left -prefrontal network including the middle-frontal gyrus, Broca's area, the a nterior insula, and the pre-SMA. This result indicates that such brain shif ting is an essential element for human access to logical thinking.