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How Do Motor Regions of the Brain Drive Fluid Intelligence?
Neuroscientists link fluid intelligence to motor regions in the cerebral cortex.
Posted March 25, 2016
I was excited to wake up this morning and read about a fascinating new study from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois which helps us better understand the brain mechanics behind the complex riddle of how physical activity and motor coordination are linked to fluid intelligence.
What Is Fluid Intelligence?
Fluid intelligence is the capacity to think creatively and solve problems in novel situations, independent of specific acquired knowledge. Fluid intelligence involves the ability to use analytic logic along with implicit knowledge by identifying seemingly unrelated patterns and connecting the dots in new and useful ways.
Having an “Aha!” moment—in which you wrestle to find an analytic solution, but then have an intuitive flash of insight that provides a correct answer—is an example of fluid intelligence. On the other hand, crystallized intelligence is the strict analytic ability to utilize skills, knowledge, and experience to answer questions.
Crystallized intelligence is a form of declarative memory that represents your lifetime of intellectual, cerebral knowledge. Crystallized intelligence is demonstrated largely through your vocabulary and other types of explicit knowledge that you could memorize for a standardized test.
In this blog post, I'm going to give a quick recap of the latest study from the Beckman Institute on fluid intelligence and then I'll present a brief timeline which lays out how these new findings fit into my hypothetical framework of the brain mechanics of "superfluidity" based on previous Psychology Today blog posts I've written on fluid intelligence.
I define superfluidity as the highest state of the flow experience. Superfluidity is an episodic experience in which your mind, body, and brain function in an ego-less state of "super flow" marked by zero friction, zero viscosity, and zero entropy between thoughts, ideas, and movements.
Brain Metabolism in Motor Regions Is Correlated with Fluid Intelligence
The new study by the University of Illinois researchers has identified one way that healthy brain metabolism corresponds with fluid intelligence, which they define as “a measure of one’s ability to solve unusual or complex problems.”
Understanding the specific brain mechanics and power sources that drive fluid intelligence helps neuroscientists characterize cognitive processes involved in various types of intelligence and offers insights into what types of interventions might improve fluid intelligence. For example, I have a hypothesis that aerobic exercise stimulates creativity and fluid intelligence, which this new research corroborates.
The March 2016 study, “Multivariate Associations of Fluid Intelligence and NAA,” was published in the journal Cerebral Cortex.
For this study, the Beckman researchers used magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) to measure N-acetyl aspartate (NAA). NAA is a biochemical marker used to gauge the neural energy production within specific brain regions. Then, they looked at the relationship between NAA concentrations in different regions of the brain and fluid intelligence.
The researchers examined how the distribution of NAA in the frontal and parietal lobes related to fluid intelligence and found that energy metabolism in the left lateralized frontal-parietal brain region predicts fluid intelligence.
These findings were independent of brain size, which is considered by many to be another significant predictor of fluid intelligence. These findings suggest that the motor regions in the cerebral cortex play a key role in the visualization and planning necessary for spatial cognition and reasoning.
In a press release, Aki Nikolaidis, who led the research with Ryan Larsen and Beckman Institute director Arthur Kramer, said, “Fluid intelligence is one of the most useful cognitive measures available. This domain relates to an individual’s job satisfaction and salary level, among other real-world outcomes.”
Nikolaidis and his colleagues found that NAA concentration in an area of the brain linked to motor abilities in the frontal and parietal cortices was specifically linked to fluid intelligence. “The brain’s motor regions have a role in planning and visualizing movements as well as carrying them out,” Nikolaidis said. “Mental visualization is a key element of fluid intelligence.”
The researchers concluded that while overall brain size can be genetically determined and not readily changed, NAA levels and brain metabolism may respond to health interventions including diet, exercise or cognitive training, all of which can improve fluid intelligence.
How Do the Motor Regions of the Brain Drive Fluid Intelligence?
As I mentioned earlier, when I first read the new study from the Beckman Institute I was immediately curious to figure out how these findings, which used state-of-the-art technology, might offer new empirical evidence to support some hunches and educated guesses I've had about the brain mechanics of creativity and fluid intelligence.
In the passage below, I cobbled together a timeline of various studies I've written about in previous Psychology Today blog posts. All of these findings are part of my ongoing attempt to solve the riddle of what role the cerebellum (Latin for “little brain”) plays in cognitive and creative processes. For the past ten years, I’ve been trying to answer questions about the cerebellum that my father posed to me before his death in 2007.
My father, Richard Bergland, was a neuroscientist, neurosurgeon, and author of the Fabric of Mind. My dad was obsessed with the fact that the cerebellum is only 10 percent of brain volume but holds over 50 percent your brain’s total neurons. He would often say, “We don’t know exactly what the cerebellum is doing, but whatever it’s doing, it’s doing a lot of it.”
Historically, the cerebellum has been considered by most neuroscientists to be a region of the brain that is primarily involved in non-thinking activities such as coordinating the timing and precision of muscle movements. However, in recent years, a wide range of studies have shown, for the first time, that the cerebellum plays a pivotal role in many of our cognitive, emotional, and creative processes including fluid intelligence.
The left hemisphere of the cerebrum controls the right side of the body; the left hemisphere of the cerebellum controls the left side of the body, and vice versa. Jeremy Schmamann, M.D. from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) at Harvard Medical School has a theory that the cerebellum might fine-tune thoughts and ideas much the same way it fine-tunes muscle movements. I think he's onto something.
Below are just a few examples of dozens of studies I’ve written about in the past few years that are each puzzle pieces in trying to solve the riddle of how brain structure, functional connectivity—and now, how the metabolism of NAA within motor regions in the cerebral cortex—are linked to fluid intelligence and superfluidity.
In October 2013, researchers from University of Jyväskylä in Finland reported that children with poor motor skills also have poorer reading and arithmetic skills. The Finnish study found that children who performed poorly in agility, speed, and manual dexterity tests also had lower reading and arithmetic test scores in first through third grades. Across the board, children with better performance in motor tests scored higher in reading and arithmetic tests.
In April 2013, a study published by researchers from the School of Child Development at Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan found that underconnectivity between the cerebellum and other brain regions contributes to many of the features found in autism spectrum disorders (ASD).
In December 2013, a study, "Even When Test Scores Go Up, Some Cognitive Abilities Don't" from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) neuroscientists working with education researchers at Harvard University and Brown University found that students at academically high-performing schools didn't necessarily have improved fluid intelligence.
In April 2014, researchers at Oregon State University published a study showing a strong correlation between the severity of autism spectrum disorder and motor skill deficiencies in very young children.
In May of 2015, researchers at Stanford University published a study which identified that the cerebellum, may, in fact, be the seat of creativity. In a press release, the Stanford study’s lead author, Manish Saggar, Ph.D., summed up the findings of how analytic thinking impacted "Aha!" moments by saying, “The more you think about it, the more you mess it up.” This is exactly what tennis legend Arthur Ashe would describe as “paralysis by analysis.”
A July 2015 study found that dynamic proprioceptive activities—which specifically involve the cerebellum—increased working memory by 50 percent. Working memory creates the mental workspace that facilitates creativity and fluid intelligence.
In March 2016, Ian Fyfe, M.D., published an article, “Cerebellar Atrophy Has Disease-Specific Patterns," in the journal Nature Reviews Neurology. In his review, Fyfe highlights two recent studies which have identified distinctive patterns of cerebellar atrophy that are related to wider patterns of brain network degeneration. Both studies found that the loss of gray matter brain volume in specific regions of the cerebellum is linked to Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
All of these studies may seem unrelated at first glance, from a strictly "crystallized intelligence" perspective. However, looking at them through the lens of fluid intelligence, I have a hunch that they are somehow connected. That said, I still haven't been able to analytically connect all the dots into a seamless conclusion. This is a work in progress.
Conclusion: Metacognition and the Importance of “Thinking About Your Thinking”
Over the past few hours, as I was writing this blog post—both at my desktop and on my smartphone while jogging—I realized that, in many ways, this article represents fluid thinking and the metabolism of energy in motor regions of the brain in action.
For example, I woke up around 5AM today and read the new Beckman Institute study for the first time. After making a pot of very strong coffee, I spent about a half hour in an intense cerebral state with laser-focus on trying to understand the nitty-gritty explicit details of the empirical science included in the study using purely crystallized intelligence.
Then, I laced up my running shoes and went for a long jog at sunrise. The goal of my run was to actively problem-solve and connect the dots of this study with previous research to see how the latest findings related to my hypothesis about all four brain hemispheres of the cerebellum and cerebrum being linked to cognition.
While running, I was daydreaming and spacing out, but also ruminating about all this research in a very laid-back and laissez-faire way. I consciously “unclamped” my prefrontal cortex, and patiently waited for insights to bubble up. Whenever I had a mini “Aha!” moment, I dictated a text message to myself into my phone as a reminder, so that I wouldn't forget about the idea before I got back to my computer to write this blog post.
During my jog, I also came up with the structure and format of this blog post, visualized what I wanted it to look like, and decided how it should flow. The minute I got home from my run, I headed straight for my computer, and sat at my desk (still covered in sweat) . . . speed-typed the copy you just read, uploaded some photos, polished it up, and posted it to the Psychology Today website. Voila!
Clearly, this blog post isn’t going to win any Pulitzer prizes. That said, my primary motivation for writing about cutting-edge neuroscience is to broadcast potentially esoteric findings to a large general audience. My hope is that someone reading this will tap into his or her fluid intelligence, have an “Aha!” moment, and advance our collective understanding of these ideas.
In my mind, fluid intelligence works best when people share their hypotheses with others before they have firmly solidified into rock-hard crystallized knowledge. Stay tuned, and please share your thoughts and ideas with myself and others in the comments.
To read more on this topic, check out my Psychology Today blog posts,
- "Too Much Crystallized Thinking Lowers Fluid Intelligence"
- "Eureka! Deconstructing the Brain Mechanics of "Aha!" Moments"
- "Does the Cerebellum Fine-Tune Complex Cerebral Processes?"
- "Can Physical Activities Improve Fluid Intelligence?"
- "Superfluidity: Decoding the Enigma of Cognitive Flexibility"
- "The Neuroscience of Imagination"
- "Why Does Overthinking Sabotage the Creative Process?"
- "The Cerebellum May Be the Seat of Creativity"
© 2016 Christopher Bergland. All rights reserved.
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