ArticleeLife2025
Shaping the physical world to our ends through the left PF technical-cognition area.
Article in eLife, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT03555162 (Cerebral Bases of Tool Use and Tool Evolution), which is not on this map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Cerebral Bases of Tool Use and Tool Evolution
Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dissociation between physical reasoning and tool use in individuals with left hemisphere brain damage.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2026Article
- Distinct and shared neural resources between processing of dynamic physical objects and spatial working memory.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- CP5-Centered Parietal HD-tACS Is Associated with Improved Performance in a Smartphone-Based Shopping Task in Older Adults: A Behavioral and EEG Investigation.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Visual processing of manipulable objects in the ventral stream is modulated by parietal action systems.Brain communications · 2026Article
- Dissociation between physical reasoning and tool use in individuals with left hemisphere brain damage.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Our propensity to materiality, which consists in using, making, creating, and passing on technologies, has enabled us to shape the physical world according to our ends. To explain this proclivity, scientists have calibrated their lens to either low-level skills such as motor cognition or high-level skills such as language or social cognition. Yet, little has been said about the intermediate-level cognitive processes that are directly involved in mastering this materiality, that is, technical cognition. We aim to focus on this intermediate level for providing new insights into the neurocognitive bases of human materiality. Here, we show that a technical-reasoning process might be specifically at work in physical problem-solving situations. We found via two distinct neuroimaging studies that the area PF (parietal F) within the left parietal lobe is central for this reasoning process in both tool-use and non-tool-use physical problem-solving and can work along with social-cognitive skills to resolve day-to-day interactions that combine social and physical constraints. Our results demonstrate the existence of a specific cognitive module in the human brain dedicated to materiality, which might be the supporting pillar allowing the accumulation of technical knowledge over generations. Intensifying research on technical cognition could nurture a comprehensive framework that has been missing in fields interested in how early and modern humans have been interacting with the physical world through technology, and how this interaction has shaped our history and culture.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.