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Veterans' brain damage offers insight into general intelligence
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Researchers reported in a national study that they have charted the neural architecture of intelligence by studying veterans who suffered focal brain damage.
Included in the study were 182 male veterans who received “penetrating head injuries” in the Vietnam War. Researchers administered numerous cognitive tests, including the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale to assess general intelligence and the Delis-Kaplan test for executive function. They also applied voxel-based lesion-mapping to study how damage to specific regions of the brain created particular forms of cognitive impairment.
According to researcher Aron Barbey PhD, the focal brain lesions exhibited by the veterans offered his research team a rare opportunity to examine the underlying mechanisms of general intelligence and executive function. “By studying how damage to particular brain regions produces specific forms of cognitive impairment, we can map the architecture of the mind, identifying brain structures that are critically important for specific intellectual abilities,” Barbey told Healio.com. “The study provides new evidence that intelligence relies not on one brain region or even the brain as a whole, but involves specific brain areas working together in a coordinated fashion.”
Barbey and colleagues wrote that “general intelligence and executive function depend on a remarkably circumscribed neural system, engaging specific areas within frontal and parietal cortex and white matter fiber tracts that bind these regions into a unified system.”
Barbey also said his findings “open the door to further investigations into the biological basis of intelligence, exploring how the brain, genes, nutrition and the environment together interact to shape the development and continued evolution of the remarkable intellectual abilities that make us human.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.