The neural basis of causal inferences about biological and physical processes

The dataset contains anonymized structural and functional fMRI data from 20 adults (7 women, 13 men, 25-37 years old, M = 28.7 years ± 3.2 SD). Participants had no known cognitive or neurological disabilities, as determined through self-report. Participants underwent 10 functional scans across three experiments. In the first experiment (6 scans), participants read two-sentence stories that elicited causal inferences about illness and causal inferences about mechanical breakdown, as well as stories that did not elicit causal inferences. Their task was to judge whether something magical happened in the story. In the second experiment (2 scans), participants read pairs of sentences, containing either plain English, math equations, or logical statements, and judged whether the pairs were consistent. In the third experiment (2 scans), participants read stories that elicited social (theory of mind) and physical reasoning before answering a true/false comprehension question. Data from this last experiment are not posted here due to ongoing work but are available upon request. T1-weighted anatomical images were also collected. For details on image acquisition parameters and data preprocessing methods, please refer to the data description file.<br>