Focused Review ARTICLE

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Fluid reasoning and the developing brain

Emilio Ferrer1, Elizabeth D. O’Hare2 and Silvia A. Bunge2,3*
1
Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
2
Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
3
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Fluid reasoning is the cornerstone of human cognition, both during development and in adulthood. Despite this, the neural mechanisms underlying the development of fluid reasoning are largely unknown. In this review, we provide an overview of this important cognitive ability, the method of measurement, its changes over the childhood and adolescence of an individual, and its underlying neurobiological underpinnings. We review important findings from psychometric, cognitive, and neuroscientific literatures, and outline important future directions for this interdisciplinary research.
Keywords:
problem-solving, intelligence, prefrontal cortex, rostrolateral parietal cortex, individual differences
Citation:
Ferrer E, O’Hare ED and Bunge SA (2009). Fluid reasoning and the developing brain. Front. Neurosci. 3:1. doi: 10.3389/neuro.01.003.2009
Received:
15 January 2009;
 Paper pending published:
09 February 2009;
Accepted:
26 February 2009;
 Published online:
01 May 2009.

Edited by:

Robert T. Knight, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Reviewed by:

Anna C. Nobre, University of Oxford, UK
Donald T. Stuss, University of Toronto, Canada;
Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, Canada
Copyright:
© 2009 Ferrer, O’Hare and Bunge. This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
*Correspondence:
Silvia Bunge, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, 132 Barker Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, 94720, USA. e-mail: sbunge@berkeley.edu
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