Modular Cognitive Architecture Emerges in Large Language Models
The human brain exhibits a striking degree of functional specialization, with distinct networks supporting language, formal reasoning, reasoning about other minds, and reasoning about the physical world. Is this modular organization a fundamental principle of how intelligent systems must be built, or an evolutionary accident specific to biological brains? Here, we test whether a similar organization emerges in Large Language Models--another class of intelligent systems created through a very different optimization process. Using circuit analyses across N=46 tasks spanning four cognitive domains (language, formal reasoning, social reasoning, physical reasoning), we find that LLMs develop a...
| Authors | Pengrui Han, Jacob Andreas, Evelina Fedorenko et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 27 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 27 June 2026 |
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