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Intelligence Map Made From Brain Injury Data
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."
I believe mine is currently functioning as intended.
This is one of those fine moments when I wish scientific journals posted online weren't pay-walled. Kinda kills the dissemination of knowledge to the masses when one has to pay $32 to view a single article once, and makes it economically infeasable for an individual to read and verify the information they hear from primary sources.
A voxel is a 3D (volumetric) pixel.
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
There's the map of The Brain; is anyone working on a map of Pinky?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
While this is undoubtedly an important study, their findings are going to have to be replicated somehow in a larger, more diverse set of subjects. They're looking at just 182 people and, while it's not mentioned explicitly in the article, it appears they're all men. We know from other studies that there are anatomical differences in men's brains compared to women's brains, and even between left handed and right handed men. It would be very interesting to see, for example, a FMRI study to see if the structures play the same role in all patients.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
brain mapping.
TFA did not specify any pre-injury base-line for intelligence.
Did they all take intelligence tests before enlisting?
Seems unlikely.
Did they have any other way to check cognitive function prior to the injury so they had some sort of a useful base-line?
Is it possible that a majority of the differences, especially in general intelligence, were less related to the injuries and more related to nature/nurture?
How about compensation?
Humans are great at adapting.
Did they check their results with people who had more recent injuries?
Might be a good starting point, but it sounds like there is a lot that could affect the things they were testing for that were not isolated or otherwise accounted for.
This study seems to be making the assumption that we all put the same brain functions in precisely the same places. But each individual has different intellectual strengths, weaknesses, and talents. Although I wouldn't say they shouldn't do this study, I fail to see how it would give us more than the coarsest understanding, biased based on the individual personalities of those tested.
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.
AFAIK, most people will lose the same function if they lose the same part of their brain. I'd wager that anyone who didn't had already lost function in that part of their brain in their childhood, and their brain compensated.
Still, it's a crap shoot, but more data is better than none. If you have a brain tumor, and the surgeon has to choose to sacrifice one part of your brain to remove the tumor, this data helps to guide that choice.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
People also have different physical strengths and weaknesses, but we still have the same muscles in the same areas. It would be reasonable to assume the brain is the same way until we have evidence that suggests otherwise.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Anything to promote research into three-boobed women...
My dad had a stroke that damaged his right frontal lobe and part of the temporal and parietal lobes 14 years ago at 40 years old. In terms of knowledge and cognition, there was little effect, however, it did affect motor control (he has left hemi-paresis) and his sense of tough (he tends to be hypersensitive to anything on his left side, usaully registering pain with any type of contact, even just brushing his arm with something soft like a feather), speech (he saw a therapist for 8 months afterward and is pretty normal now), ability to swallow (which has since recovered), his left field of vision (if he concentrates, he can see things, but he generally ignores things there in casual vision, note that there are two different pathways for vision in the brain too), short term memory and some new long term memory (though recall of old memories is still pretty good), emotions and personality. His senses of taste and smell seemed to have changed too. Lately, he's been having problems with sleep as well (though whether or not that is caused by a new malfunction in the brain or something else isn't known right now). He also tends to be less creative in thought about learning new things, preferring step by step instructions (but that's probably because the right brain is more creative while the left is more literal and analytical).
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
I think the study is full of holes
Bert
I can't help it:
http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf
When it comes to fMRI studies, I always remember the story of a dead salmon in an fMRI scanner, that was shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations. The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing.
Of course, it was a resounding success! And now SCIENCE knows where in the brain of a dead salmon, the mental process to evaluate human emotions occurs.
"I am not deceiving myself about anything"