thenoobyorker:

dailymedical:

Goodbye, IQ Tests: Brain Imaging Can Reveal Intelligence Levels

Research from Washington University in St. Louis has identified variations in brain scans that they believe identify portions of the brain that are responsible for intelligence.

As suspected (and as explained by cartoons) brain size does play a small role; they said that brain size accounts for 6.7 percent of variance in intelligence. Recent research has placed the brain’s prefrontal cortex, a region just behind the forehead, as providing for 5 percent of the variation in intelligence between people.

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Honestly, neuroscience is going to feed science studies for at least three decades with this type of work.

The interesting thing here is these guys used resting state images, meaning the tasks were not done in the scanner. They looked at the LPFC (left prefrontal cortext), but other findings have shown the dlPFC (dorsolateral prefrontal cortext) to be a global hub of general intelligence, so, it’s about connections as well. I don’t have access to the Wash methods, so I wonder how/if SCR signals were factored. Notice I didn’t call it noise, you’ll be seeing more of that.