Intelligence Map Made From Brain Injury Data 102
An anonymous reader writes with this news out of the University of Illinois:
"Scientists report that they have mapped the physical architecture of intelligence in the brain. Theirs is one of the largest and most comprehensive analyses so far of the brain structures vital to general intelligence and to specific aspects of intellectual functioning, such as verbal comprehension and working memory. Their study, published in Brain: A Journal of Neurology (abstract), is unique in that it enlisted an extraordinary pool of volunteer participants: 182 Vietnam veterans with highly localized brain damage from penetrating head injuries. ... The researchers took CT scans of the participants’ brains and administered an extensive battery of cognitive tests. They pooled the CT data to produce a collective map of the cortex, which they divided into more than 3,000 three-dimensional units called voxels. By analyzing multiple patients with damage to a particular voxel or cluster of voxels and comparing their cognitive abilities with those of patients in whom the same structures were intact, the researchers were able to identify brain regions essential to specific cognitive functions, and those structures that contribute significantly to intelligence."
Voxel (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What is the use of the right side of the brain (Score:5, Informative)
That was another question that came up in the QA section of a talk by the lead researcher, Aron Barbey a couple weeks ago.
Obviously, it's doing things that just weren't measured by these particular tests. You don't waste that much blood flow and energy use on "nothing". These tests were aimed at specific types of verbal and executive reasoning.
Barbey also mentioned that the majority of the participants in the study were right handed, and they needed follow up research to deal with the questions of whether that effects the results of the study.
Re:Oh, Journal paywalls... (Score:5, Informative)
While journal access is costly, most researchers post PDF reprints of their papers on their lab website. Google Scholar is pretty good at finding them. Here [decisionne...ncelab.org] is the PDF for this article. I expect this is not paywalled, but since I'm at an academic institution I can't be sure.