Talk:Neuroscience and intelligence

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Should we change the title to Neurobiology and intelligence in order to expand the scope and future-proof the article. That would cover both volumentric as well as functional assays. --Rikurzhen 05:01, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a potentially more interesting and informative article, one which I would like to read. Maybe something else than neurobiology (e.g., neuroscience), but I certainly advocate broadening the scope from brain size. Arbor 07:33, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gray & Thompson (2004)

From Gray & Thompson (2004) [1]... stuff we should integrate here --Rikurzhen 04:07, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC) Neurobiological determinants of intelligence as measured by IQ:

1. Posterior lesions often cause substantial decreases in IQ. Duncan and colleagues suggested that the frontal lobes are involved more in Gf and goal-directed behaviour than in Gc (Fig. 2). In addition, Gf is compromised more by damage to the frontal lobes than to posterior lobe...
2. MRI-based studies estimate a moderate correlation between brain size and intelligence of 0.40 to 0.51
3. g was significantly linked to differences in the volume of frontal grey matter, which were determined primarily by genetic factors... the volume of frontal grey matter had additional predictive validity for g even after the predictive effect of total brain volume was factored out
4. Only one region is consistently activated during three different intelligence tasks when compared to control tasks...The surface features of the tasks differed (spatial, verbal, circles) but all were moderately strong predictors of g (g LOADING; range of r, 0.55–0.67), whereas control tasks were weaker predictors of g (range of r, 0.37–0.41). Neural activity in several areas, measured by a positron emission tomography (PET) scan, was greater during high-g than low-g tasks.
5. Speed and reliability of neural transmission are related to higher intelligence (reviewed in Refs 15,20). Early neuroimaging studies using PET found that intelligence correlated negatively with cerebral glucose metabolism during mental activity54 (for a review, see Ref. 55), leading to the formulation of a 'neural efficiency' hypothesis...
6. Gf is mediated by neural mechanisms that support the executive control of attention during working memory...greater event-related neural activity in many regions, including the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes, dorsal anterior cingulate and lateral cerebellum. Crucially, these patterns were most distinct during high-interference trials, even after controlling for behavioural performance and for activity on low-interference trials within the same regions
7. RAPM scores obtained outside the scanner predicted brain activity in a single left parietal/temporal region, and not in the frontal lobes.
8. An exploratory fMRI study60 (n = 7) indicated that parietal areas are involved in inspection time tasks, specifically Brodmann area (BA) 40 and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (BA47) but not the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

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"[...] showed that frontal gray matter volume was correlated with g and highly heritable."

What is g? Eighty 10:51, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

g is a general measure of overall intellegence... I think it is a Spearman thing, look at http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html. Dark Nexus 19:52, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

This sounds wrong to me "smaller brains might be advantageous from an evolutionary point of view if they are equal in intelligence to larger brains." Surely if intelligence is equal a smaller brain is definitely an evolutionary advantage due to its lower energy usage. I think it should read "smaller brains might be advantageous from an evolutionary point of view EVEN IF they are LOWER in intelligence than larger brains."

[edit] Intelligence and brain energy (wattage) use

Is there known to be a specific correlation? I thought I read in one research paper that, in humans, brains of higher IQ tended to use less energy because they were more efficient. But I cannot find this source... and it goes against the general biological idea that higher intelligence requires more energy use from the brain. It's also confusing when debating the 'race and intelligence (genetics)' issue, because it seems odd that some population groups would average such below average IQs when there would be much to gain in metabolic efficiency in having higher IQs. Peoplesunionpro 17:08, 15 April 2006 (UTC)