Brain's Lateral Prefrontal Cortex: Images help predict how smart you are

"There is evidence that the lateral prefrontal cortex is the brain region that 'remembers' (maintains) the goals and instructions that help you keep doing what is needed when you’re working on a task," says Michael Cole. 

"So it makes sense that having this region communicating effectively with other regions (the 'perceivers' and ‘doers’ of the brain) would help you to accomplish tasks intelligently." 

(Credit: Michael Cole/WUSTL)

As science has long suspected, overall brain size matters somewhat, accounting for about 6.7 percent of individual variation in intelligence.

More recent research has pinpointed the brain’s lateral prefrontal cortex, a region just behind the temple, as a critical hub for high-level mental processing, with activity levels there predicting another five percent of variation in individual intelligence.

Now, new research from Washington University in St. Louis suggests that another 10 percent of individual differences in intelligence can be explained by the strength of neural pathways connecting the left lateral prefrontal cortex to the rest of the brain.

Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the findings establish “global brain connectivity” as a new approach for understanding human intelligence.

“Our research shows that connectivity with a particular part of the prefrontal cortex can predict how intelligent someone is,” suggests lead author Michael W. Cole, a postdoctoral research fellow in cognitive neuroscience.

The study is the first to provide compelling evidence that neural connections between the lateral prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain make a unique and powerful contribution to the cognitive processing underlying human intelligence, says Cole, whose research focuses on discovering the cognitive and neural mechanisms that make human behaviour uniquely flexible and intelligent.

“This study suggests that part of what it means to be intelligent is having a lateral prefrontal cortex that does its job well; and part of what that means is that it can effectively communicate with the rest of the brain,” says study co-author Todd Braver, professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences and of neuroscience and radiology in the School of Medicine.

Braver is also a co-director of the Cognitive Control and Psychopathology Lab, where the research was conducted.

Read the full article at  Futurity.org or at Washington University