A team of researchers at UCL and UCLH have identified the key brain regions that are essential for logical thinking and problem solving.

The findings, published in Brain, help to increase our understanding of how the human brain supports our ability to comprehend, draw conclusions, and deal with new and novel problems—otherwise known as reasoning skills.

To determine which brain areas are necessary for a certain ability, researchers study patients with brain lesions (an area of damage in the brain) caused by stroke or brain tumors. This approach, known as “lesion-deficit mapping,” is the most powerful method for localizing function in the human brain.