A connection was found between intelligence and the size of certain areas of the brain
Helen Pilcher, Nature
The gray matter in the brain is apparently related to intelligence
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When it comes to IQ, apparently size does matter. Research, using brain imaging, claims that human intelligence is based on the volume of gray matter in certain areas of the brain. In doing so, the study challenges other views regarding the basis of intelligence.
Researchers have been working to identify the biological basis of intelligence for decades. More than 25 years ago, a loose connection was found between IQ and the overall size of the brain. Other researchers claimed that the level of intelligence depends on the size of the frontal lobe.
However, now the accepted opinions say that probably more complex characteristics, such as the speed of transmission of nerve impulses in the brain or the number of existing neuron connections, affect intelligence.
The current study challenges this idea and claims that the volume of certain areas of the brain does have an effect.
Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the amount of gray matter in the brains of 47 adults who underwent IQ tests.
The researchers divided the brain into regions and checked the amount of gray matter in each of them. Gray matter consists of a diffuse network of brain regions believed to be involved in information processing. It is rich in nerve cell bodies and looks gray to our eyes.
The scientists found that people with high IQs had a significantly greater amount of gray matter in 24 specific areas than people with low IQs. Many of these areas, scattered throughout the brain, are known to be associated with memory, concentration and language. The results of the study are published in the online journal Neuroimage.
Hayer believes that different aspects of intelligence may depend on the amount of gray matter in different areas of the brain. "This may be why one person does well with math but has trouble with spelling, while another person with the same IQ will have the opposite combination of abilities," he says.
However, Hayar and his colleagues also discovered that apparently only 6% of the total amount of gray matter is related to IQ.
Hayer raises the possibility that neurons in the particular areas discovered work to allow the brain to process information more efficiently. "Information cascades are processed throughout the brain at every moment, but intelligence seems to be related to the efficient use of a relatively limited number of structures, in which the more gray matter there is, the better," he says.
Robert Plomin, who studies intelligence at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, says the findings are intriguing. Of all the characteristics of the brain that may be related to intelligence, "it is surprising that the simplest of all these characteristics, size, is the one with the highest correlation with IQ," he says. However, the match is not very high, he adds.
Intelligence researcher John Duncan (Duncan) from the Neuroscience and Cognition Unit in Cambridge warns that the possibility that the discovered match is the result of chance cannot be ignored. "It's hard to say exactly what the meaning of the research is."
Translation: Dikla Oren
The article in Nature
The brain savant
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