Our remarkable ability to infer complex cause-effect relationships is thought to distinguish humans from all other species. Despite that causal inferencing pervades human cognition, it remains unclear whether this fundamental cognitive ability is supported by a unified, domain-general mechanism or multiple domain-specific mechanisms. Both the language and logical reasoning systems have been described as possible unified substrates of causal inferencing. The current study uses neuroimaging to offer insight into this debate. We specifically focus on the culturally universal and highly motivationally relevant case of inferring illness causes. Participants read causal and noncausal vignettes about illness and mechanical failure while undergoing fMRI. We find that inferring the causes of illness selectively activates the brain’s ‘animacy network’, particularly the precuneus. By contrast, a domain-general (i.e., content-invariant) preference for causal inferencing did not emerge, including in the language and logical reasoning networks. Together, this evidence suggests that domain-specific mechanisms enable causal inferencing.

Authors:

Miriam Hauptman: Johns Hopkins University; Marina Bedny: Johns Hopkins University