page_title: Dual process theory
section_title: fMRI studies
hierarchical_section_title: Dual process theory / Evidence / fMRI studies
caption_attribution_description: English: http://nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/neuroimaging-and-mental-illness-a-window-into-the-brain/neuroimaging-and-mental-illness-a-window-into-the-brain.shtml The image is, per that URL, in the public doman: "NIMH publications are in the public domain and may be reproduced or copied without permission from the National Institute of Mental Health"
context_page_description: In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how thought can arise in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit, unconscious process and an explicit, conscious process. Verbalized explicit processes or attitudes and actions may change with persuasion or education; though implicit process or attitudes usually take a long amount of time to change with the forming of new habits. Dual process theories can be found in social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology. It has also been linked with economics via prospect theory and behavioral economics, and increasingly in sociology through cultural analysis.
context_section_description: Vinod Goel and others produced neuropsychological evidence for dual-process accounts of reasoning using fMRI studies. They provided evidence that anatomically distinct parts of the brain were responsible for the two different kinds of reasoning. They found that content-based reasoning caused left temporal hemisphere activation whereas abstract formal problem reasoning activated the parietal system. They concluded that different kinds of reasoning, depending on the semantic content, activated one of two different systems in the brain.
  A similar study incorporated fMRI during a belief-bias test. They found that different mental processes were competing for control of the response to the problems given in the belief-bias test. The prefrontal cortex was critical in detecting and resolving conflicts, which are characteristic of System 2, and had already been associated with that System 2. The ventral medial prefrontal cortex, known to be associated with the more intuitive or heuristic responses of System 1, was the area in competition with the prefrontal cortex.
caption: Researcher conducting Functional magnetic resonance imaging test.
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