How Variable Your Brain Is Could Indicate Your Intelligence

The more variable a brain is, the higher a person’s IQ and creativity are, a study has found.

AsianScientist (Jul. 27, 2016) – Researchers in China and the UK have attempted to define and measure human intelligence and discover how intellect works.

The research team, which includes researchers from Fudan University, quantified the brain’s dynamic functions and identified how different parts of the brain interact with each other at different times. The work was published in Brain.

Using resting-state magnetic resonance imaging analysis on thousands of people’s brains around the world, the research has found that the areas of the brain that are associated with learning and development show high levels of variability, meaning that they change their neural connections with other parts of the brain more frequently—over a matter of minutes or seconds.

On the other hand, regions of the brain that aren’t associated with intelligence—the visual, auditory, and sensory-motor areas—show small variability and adaptability.

What the researchers found was that the more variable a brain is, and the more its different parts frequently connect with each other, the higher a person’s IQ and creativity are.

More accurate understanding of human intelligence could lead to future developments in artificial intelligence (AI), the researchers said, as current AI systems do not process the variability and adaptability of the human brain. Advanced artificial neural networks with the ability to learn, grow and adapt could someday form the core of futuristic computers.

“Human intelligence is a widely and hotly-debated topic and only recently have advanced brain imaging techniques, such as those used in our current study, given us the opportunity to gain sufficient insights to resolve this and inform developments in artificial intelligence,” said lead author Professor Feng Jianfeng from the University of Warwick in the UK.

This study may also have implications for a deeper understanding of another largely-misunderstood field: mental health. Altered patterns of variability were observed in the brain’s default network for patients with schizophrenia, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.


The article can be found at: Zhang et al. (2016) Neural, Electrophysiological and Anatomical Basis of Brain-Network Variability and its Characteristic Changes in Mental Disorders.

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Source: University of Warwick; Photo: Shutterstock.
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