Models of Abstract Reasoning in Healthy Participants

Among advanced cognitive functions, abstract reasoning is closely associated with an ability to detect relations among objects, ideas, conditions or events. Abstract thinking underlies the understanding of other individuals' thoughts, intentions and problem-solving. Due to high individual variance in creating abstractions, neural underpinnings of the phenomenon remain unclear. Using EEG, we investigated neurophysiological differences accompanying abstract reasoning in 17 healthy volunteers. There were three types of conditions representing different models of abstract reasoning and using correspondent stimuli: direct (nouns from one semantic category), latent (a loose relation based on a common attribute of the presented words), and non-related words. The participants were to define a general association underlying a group of presented words.