Smart people have more efficient brains

Research out of ETH Zurich has found that the brains of more intelligent people are functionally different than the brains of people less intelligent, and that “smarter” brains solve tasks more efficiently.
“[W]hen a more and a less intelligent person are given the same task, the more intelligent person requires less cortical activation to solve the task,” explained Elsbeth Stern, Professor for Research on Learning and Instruction at ETH Zurich, in a press release.
This confirms the neural efficiency hypothesis (simply put, the notion that smarter people have more efficient brains), although for most experts this was a foregone conclusion.
However, the hypothesis was confirmed in tasks of moderate difficulty involving working memory, a more specific area.
As easy as ABC?
Working memory involves the temporary storage, manipulation, and organization of information; working intelligence involves being able to associate old memories with new information, as well as being able to filter out old information after it becomes irrelevant.
Eighty-three students were issued IQ tests to split them into groups: slightly above-average intelligence and well above-average intelligence. They were given working memory tasks to solve, including one in which students had to identify whether letters of the alphabet previously shown were now present in a group of multiple letters. During the tasks, the students had their brain activity measured by EEG.
Between the two groups, there were no differences between brain function in very easy or very difficult tasks. However, there was a clear difference in moderately difficult tasks: the higher-IQ group was more efficient.
Stern explained why it took moderate tasks to distinguish the two by using an analogy with cars. “When both cars are travelling slowly, neither car consumes very much fuel. If the efficient car travels at maximum speed, it also consumes a lot of fuel. At moderate speeds, however, the differences in fuel consumption become significant.”
Memory can’t be “exercised”
Further, training the students in memory tasks did not change the relationship between intelligence and brain activation. Those who had practiced certain tasks did not have an advantage over those who did not when given a new (but similar) task.
This adds to the growingly contentious debate as to whether brain games can truly improve your memory and intelligence through “exercise”. Many scientists posit that playing a memory game will make you great at that game—but won’t apply to other areas, and will just fade away if you don’t maintain it anyway.
With these results added to the picture, you may want to spend your money elsewhere.
The study was published in the journal Intelligence.
(Image credit: Thinkstock)
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