Neural Mechanism of Mental Imagery in Problem Solving

To investigate the role of mental imagery during heuristic problem solving, we took 4×4 sudoku as a new paradigm in this study. There were two experimental conditions, one was split meant participant needed to integrate Sudoku information of two parts, and the other was no split meant participant could solve the problem directly without integration. Based on the theory of ACT-R (adaptive control of thought-rational) model, five key brain areas were analyzed. The result showed that regions of left Fusiform gyrus (LFG), bilateral Prefrontal Cortex (PFC), and Posterior Parietal Cortex (PPC) were involved in the process of mental imagery. And the further functional connectivity analysis showed that the correlations between PPC and PFC as well as PPC and LFG was significantly increased in the condition of split. The results suggested that except for the region PPC played a key role for the processing of mental imagery, the association of PPC with other regions, such as FG and PFC would improve the mental imagery during heuristic problem solving.