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Lateral inferior prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex are engaged at different stages in the solution of insight problems
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 07/02/09
Anderson JR et al. – A summary of two problem-solving studies reports that the lateral inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are engaged at different stages in the solution of insight problems. Both studies produced distinct patterns of LIPFC and ACC activity.
Methods- Goal of both studies: find a word that satisfied a set of constraints for puzzle solving
- First study: remote-association task in which subjects had to find a word to form compound words with 3 other words
- Second study: subjects had to complete a word fragment with an associate of another word
- LIPFC activation increased as subjects retrieved a solution and decreased on retrieval of a solution
- ACC activation increased on retrieval of a solution, reflecting the need to process that solution
- Second experiment data are fit by an information-processing model that interprets LIPFC activity as reflecting retrieval operations and ACC activity as reflecting subgoal setting