Access to deductive logic depends on a right ventromedial prefrontal area devoted to emotion and feeling: evidence from a training paradigm

Abstract

Does the human capacity for access to deductive logic depend on emotion and feeling? With positron emission tomography, we compared the brain networks recruited by two groups of subjects who were either able or not able to shift from errors to logical responses in a deductive reasoning task. They were scanned twice while performing the same task, before and after a training session. The error-to-logical shift occurred in a group that underwent logicoemotional training but not in the other group, trained in logic only-a "cold" kind of training. The intergroup comparison pointed out that access to deductive logic involved a right ventromedial prefrontal area known to be devoted to emotion and feeling.