People who have a more efficiently organized exchange of information in their brain have a higher IQ. Martijn van den Heuvel, a researcher from University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht describes this in his paper which was published in the Journal of Neuroscience on June 10, 2009. He analyzed the brain activity of a sample of people by using an MRI scanner.
The brain consists of a complex network in which the various areas are continuously exchanging information with each other. This means that the various areas of the brain are functionally connected with each other. Van den Heuvel and colleagues showed that the brains of people with a higher IQ require fewer connectivity steps to send information from one part of the brain to another.
This larger global efficiency in more intelligent people is not due simply to more connections in the brain. It results from efficient communication between the various areas of the brain. The strongest links between IQ and efficiency can be found in areas at the front of the brain – where it is known that they are especially involved in more complex behavior.
“It is quite possible that this means that intelligence has something to do with how easily the various areas of the brain can integrate their information,” van den Heuvel says. “Perhaps the higher cognitive brain areas in more intelligent people have a more efficient access to information than the other areas in the brain network.”
Recent research has shown that functional communication between various areas of the brain works well but just how this degree of efficiency is related to human behavior was not known up until now. Van den Heuvel’s research shows that intelligence is related to how efficiently the brain can link the various streams of information with each other. It will help in the understanding of intelligence in the human brain.
In the study, van den Heuvel scanned the brains of nineteen healthy subjects with an MRI scanner. He analyzed the brain activity of the research subjects while they were at rest and therefore not undertaking any tasks or activity. The functional brain network was mapped by looking at which areas of the brain were spontaneously active at the same time.
Van den Heuvel conducted the study as part of his doctoral research at University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht. Professor Hilleke Hulshoff Pol and Professor René Kahn supervised the study.