![]() “And then there were some people who were actually getting worse over the course of the intervention.” “We noticed that, independent of the activity they were engaged in, some people were improving and some were not improving on measures of fluid intelligence,” Daugherty said. The size of several brain structures – some of which are known to be closely associated with fluid intelligence – was larger in these participants than for everyone else in the study, with the exception of two regions that were smaller: the middle frontal insula and parahippocampal cortex. “We had enough people who showed this pattern that the statistical analysis actually identified them as a group, regardless of the intervention group they were in,” Daugherty said. ![]() This group of 71 individuals also shared specific brain attributes that distinguished them from the other participants. Their analyses revealed that some individuals in each intervention group did better than others on tests of fluid intelligence at the beginning and end of the intervention and benefited from the training more than others. The researchers used scientifically validated methods to determine the relative volumes of several brain structures that previous studies have implicated in fluid intelligence. “We wanted to know whether structural brain attributes predicted an individual’s response to intervention, as measured by improvement on tests of fluid intelligence,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Aron Barbey, who led the research with Wayne State University psychology professor Ana Daugherty. A subset of randomly selected participants also underwent MRI brain imaging. People in the active control group engaged in visual search tasks over the course of the 16-week study.Īt the beginning and end of the study, the scientists tested participants’ fluid intelligence, the ability to solve unfamiliar tests of logic and spatial reasoning. One intervention involved aerobic exercise another combined exercise and cognitive training and a third consisted of mindfulness training, exercise and cognitive training. ![]() Participants were randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups or an active control group. The study included 424 people, all of whom scored within the normal range on tests of intelligence. The work also identifies brain regions that appear to play a more central role in supporting fluid intelligence than was previously understood. ![]() The study is the first to link the size of specific brain structures to a person’s response to interventions, the researchers said. Fluid intelligence is a measure of one’s ability to adapt to new situations and solve never-before-seen problems. People with specific brain attributes are more likely than others to benefit from targeted cognitive interventions designed to enhance fluid intelligence, scientists report in a new study. ![]()
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