How our brains connect unrelated concepts through reasoning

Have you ever considered how your brain employs reasoning to draw connections between seemingly unrelated objects or concepts? Our cognitive abilities empower us to make these connections in often non-obvious ways.

For example, we can relate inclement weather to commuting delays, understanding that heavy rain or snow can lead to slower traffic and extended travel times.

Likewise, we recognize how environmental factors, such as temperature and habitat shifts, impact species evolution over time, resulting in adaptations crucial for survival.

This distinctive reasoning pattern, known as analogical thinking, enables us to infer relationships that significantly enhance our decision-making processes.

It allows us to navigate complex scenarios with impressive adaptability, whether we are adjusting our plans in response to unpredictable weather or contemplating the broader implications of climate change on biodiversity.

By refining this skill, we can boost our problem-solving capabilities and deepen our understanding of the world around us.

Secrets of our neurons

A landmark study has offered enlightening data and insights that outline the neuronal workings of inferential reasoning.

“We are beginning to understand how the brain learns and how we extract knowledge from what we experience,” said Ueli Rutishauser, PhD, a co-corresponding author on the study and a professor of neuroscience, neurosurgery, and biomedical science at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

The study, conducted as part of a multi-institutional consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN Initiative, used electrical recordings from more than 3,000 neurons in 17 volunteers with epilepsy who were undergoing invasive monitoring in the hospital to locate the sources of their seizures.

Stefano Fusi, PhD, a principal investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute and the study’s other co-corresponding author, noted that this unique dataset allowed researchers to monitor how the brain’s cells represent a learning process critical for inferential reasoning.

“These individuals gave us the precious opportunity to learn something new about how all of our brains work,” added Dr. Rutishauser.

Inferential reasoning in brain

These breakthroughs aren’t just for the scientific community but mirror our day-to-day inferences. The researchers challenged the participants with a simple inferential reasoning task.

Initially, the participants responded based on their previously understood associations, but they quickly learned to adapt to the new rules.

This neural adaptability reflects the rationale we apply in navigating different environments—for instance, knowing which side of the road to check first when crossing in New York or London.

“If you live both in New York and in London, and you fly to the UK, you know that you have to look right when you want to cross a road,” explained Dr. Fusi.

“Even if you visit places you have never been to in the UK, like the countryside in Wales, you infer that the new rules still apply there.”

Giving shape to brain activity and reasoning

The next question is, how can these neural processes be physically interpreted?

In a groundbreaking approach, scientists transformed the electrical brain activity of volunteers into geometric representations using complex mathematical tools.

These resulted in high-dimensional shapes that were visually unparalleled. The transformation revealed astonishing differences between situations when the subjects successfully made inferences versus those when they were unsuccessful.

“In certain neuronal populations during learning, we saw transitions from disordered representations to these beautiful geometric structures that were correlated with the ability to reason inferentially,” Dr. Fusi observed.

The researchers observed these geometric structures primarily in the hippocampus, a brain area traditionally associated with spatial location.

This discovery shows that the hippocampus also plays a crucial role in functions like inference-making and learning.

“This work elucidates a neural basis for conceptual knowledge, which is essential for reasoning, making inferences, planning, and even regulating emotions,” said Daniel Salzman, MD, PhD, a coauthor of the study and a principal investigator at the Zuckerman Institute.

Power of verbal instruction

Yet another compelling discovery was the impact of verbal instruction on neural representations. “Verbal instruction is how we build knowledge about things that we have never actually experienced,” added Dr. Rutishauser.

It was observed that participants who learned associations via verbal instruction structured neural representations in the hippocampus similar to those who learned through hands-on experience.

This observation underlines the power of verbal instruction in forming structured neural representations similar to experiential learning.

The role of valuable volunteers and collaborators

Credit is due to the brave volunteers, patients suffering from drug-resistant epilepsy. Their willingness to partake in this research allowed invaluable insights into brain functionality.

The data collected was utilized to locate each participant’s seizure source, ultimately aiding in further treatment planning.

“This study provides new insights into how our brains allow us to learn and carry out tasks flexibly and in response to changing conditions and experiences,” said Dr. Merav Sabri, program director for The BRAIN Initiative.

The study also highlights the critical contributions from collaborators like Dr. Taufik Valiante at the University of Toronto’s Krembil Research Institute and Division of Neurosurgery, as well as graduate student Hristos Courellis and postdoctoral researcher Juri Minxha, PhD, at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center and the California Institute of Technology.

The full study was published in the journal Nature.

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