Jérôme Prado, Nicola Spotorno, Eric Koun, Emily Hewitt, Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst, Dan Sperber, Ira Noveck (2015) Neural interaction between logical reasoning and pragmatic processing in narrative discourse. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 27(4), 692-704.

 Abstract: Logical connectives (e.g., or , if, and not) are central to everyday conversation, and the inferences they generate are made with little effort in pragmatically sound situations. In contrast, the neural substrates of logical inference-making have been studied exclusively in abstract tasks where pragmatic concerns are minimal. Here, we used fMRI in an innovative design that employed narratives to investigate the interaction between logical reasoning and pragmatic processing in natural discourse.