Neural Substrates of Fluid Reasoning: An fMRI Study of Neocortical Activation during Performance of the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test

We examined brain activation, as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging, during problem solving in seven young, healthy participants. Participants solved problems selected from the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test, a test known to predict performance on a wide range of reasoning tasks. In three conditions, participants solved problems requiring (1) analytic reasoning; (2) figural or visuospatial reasoning; or (3) simple pattern...