# Brain work correlated with intelligence **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 13, 2006, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-work-correlated-with-intelligence/372542 "2006-09-13T14:11:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2006, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-work-correlated-with-intelligence/372542/1 "2006-09-13T14:11:34Z")
> [@](#): > > Intelligence research is full of surprises. For example, the brains of smarter people, as measured by IQ, tend to be less active but more efficient, Haier says. [This](http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/09/11/gupta.genius/) is a the conclusion of a study using new MRI techonology at the MIND institute. Although counterintitive, it would make sense that smarter people use less less brain work. Thinking harder is not thinking smarter. A genius would be able to think ‘easily’, with inferences, ideas, ect. coming to them almost automatically. Does this conclusion follow from your personal experience? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2006, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-work-correlated-with-intelligence/372542/2 "2006-09-13T14:22:57Z")
Sounds similar to the fact that “the person working hardest is not necessarily the person doing most or best work”. But I don’t go through life sticking my coworkers into MRI scanners, so I don’t know if our different efficiencies correlate with the colored pictures. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2006, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-work-correlated-with-intelligence/372542/3 "2006-09-14T04:22:32Z")
Overly strong Assertion 1: A brain is just a computer. Overly strong Assertion 2: The best computer programs use the least resources: size of program, computation time, memory, communication, etc. Overly strong Conclusion: The best brains run really good programs. Now, to really confuse things: Over the years, while the number of transistors in a CPU have gone up exponentially, the _percentage_ of transistors doing anything useful during a clock cycle has also gone down exponentially. (Fortunately, the first is rising faster than the second else we’d be using 3GHz 386’s.) It’s almost as if, relatively speaking, the better the chip, the less of it gets really used. Also, thinking is a big drain on energy, produces a lot of waste heat, etc. The more efficient your thinking, the less food you need. Stuff like that. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2006, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-work-correlated-with-intelligence/372542/4 "2006-09-14T04:31:20Z")
Well, sure it seems intuitively true. Those who are smarter don’t have to think about things as long before they understand them. Smarter people see solutions to problems sooner. I know when I’m not getting something, and I have to work at corralling my thoughts into an orderly pattern, and try really hard to see the connection between A and B, then my head literally starts to hurt. I’m thinking harder because I’m not getting it right away. At the same time, I’m “spinning” my mental wheels, running over the same thought process that doesn’t get me anywhere. Asimov had a great essay once about what he called The Eureka Effect (it might even have been titled that) where he talks about how often the best way to solve a really hard problem is to stop thinking about it. He’d walk away from his office and go see a movie. A really fluffy popcorn adventure movie, to be precise. While his conscious mind was being entertained, at some deep unconscious level, his brain would be putting data together in news ways, and he’d more often than not walk out of the theater at the end of the movie with the answer to his problem. I’m sure his brainscan would look a lot less active at the movie (at least in the “problem solving” areas), but once he got himself distracted out of his mental rut, the connections were made quickly and easily. ---
**Author:** ![Beefalo\_Bill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Beefalo\_Bill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beefalo_Bill)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2006, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-work-correlated-with-intelligence/372542/5 "2006-09-14T16:10:05Z")
This makes sense in light of a recent study done at the _National Institute of Mental Heath_ published this year…which seems to suggest the same thing. That is, that the brains of “high IQ” individuals might be wired more “efficiently.” [http://www.bri.ucla.edu/bri\_weekly/news\_060330.asp](http://www.bri.ucla.edu/bri_weekly/news_060330.asp) > [@](#): > > \*\*The brains of highly intelligent children develop in a different pattern from those with more average abilities, researchers have found after analyzing a series of imaging scans collected over 17 years. > > The discovery, some experts expect, will help scientists understand intelligence in terms of the genes that foster it and the childhood experiences that can promote it. > > “This is the first time that anyone has shown that the brain grows differently in extremely intelligent children,” said Paul M. Thompson, a brain-imaging expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. > > The finding is based on 307 children in Bethesda, Md., an affluent suburb of Washington. Starting in 1989, they were given regular brain scans using magnetic resonance imaging, a project initiated by Dr. Judith Rapoport of the National Institute of Mental Health. > > This set of scans has been analyzed by Philip Shaw, Dr. Jay Giedd and others at the institute and at McGill University in Montreal. They looked at changes in the thickness of the cerebral cortex, the thin sheet of neurons that clads the outer surface of the brain and is the seat of many higher mental processes. > > The general pattern of maturation, they report in Nature today, is that the cortex grows thicker as the child ages and then thins out. The cause of the changes is unknown, because the imaging process cannot see down to the level of individual neurons. > > But basically the brain seems to be rewiring itself as it matures, with the thinning of the cortex reflecting a pruning of redundant connections. > > The analysis was started to check out a finding by Dr. Thompson: that parts of the frontal lobe of the cortex are larger in people with high I.Q.'s. Looking at highly intelligent 7-year-olds, the researchers said they were surprised to find that the cortex was thinner than in a comparison group of children of average intelligence. > > It was only in following the scans as the children grew older that the dynamism of the developing brain became evident. The researchers found that average children (I.Q. scores 83 to 108) reached a peak of cortical thickness at age 7 or 8. Highly intelligent children (121 to 149 in I.Q.) reached a peak thickness much later, at 13, followed by a more dynamic pruning process. > > _One interpretation, Dr. Rapoport said, is that the brains of highly intelligent children are more plastic or changeable, swinging through a higher trajectory of cortical thickening and thinning than occurs in average children. The scans show the “sculpturing or fine tuning of parts of the cortex which support higher level thought, and maybe this is happening more efficiently in the most intelligent children,” Dr. Shaw said…._\*\* ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2006, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brain-work-correlated-with-intelligence/372542/6 "2006-09-15T17:21:17Z")
[QUOTE=ftg] It’s almost as if, relatively speaking, the better the chip, the less of it gets really used. [/QUOTE] ‘We use ten percent of our brain’. I know this is an [urban legend](http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm) but in light of the recent study I’m not so sure anymore. If a person of average intelligence uses ten percent of their brain then a genius would use one percent of their brain.