It is really interesting when it comes to reading and perhaps, writting articles related to brain and processes. Why? Because a person's brain is remarkable. Anyway, some friends have asked me to briefly explain how human brain works, especially when dealing with intelligence and IQ. Why a twin brother who looked so similar would have such huge differences in their IQ level? I think I will start explaining from scratch. For adults, it was stated that their brain consist of at least 100 billion neurons, connected to at least 5000 synapses. In summary, a brain can store information from centuries (if you live long). It can also reconstruct our surroundings, perceiving different cues with it's ability (sound, tactile, ofactory etc.). In neurology wise, the brain coordinate with at least 640 muscles for essential energy generation. Because human brain involved many different sections of studies, therefore, for this post, I will only explain factors that determine a person's IQ level.


Caption: a picture of a brain

There are plenty of questions related to human brain. For instance, does size of the brain influences a person's IQ. In fact, the answer is no. Though there were plenty of studies claimed that the linkage of brain size, weight, volume and perhaps the head circumfereence will determine intelligence, but no consistent pattern has emerged. Some researcher conducted several experiments with a large volume of students to determine their IQ, including their gender and found no obvious linkage to determine their level of intelligence. Anyway, women's brain are smaller than men's, yet there is no consistent difference in men's and women's IQs. This has proven in the Guinness World Records, listed that Marilyn vos Savant (women) has the highest IQ between 1986 - 1989. Therefore, it is so hard to measure a person's IQ. However, if size does not matter, then what determine a person's IQ?


Caption: brain / head size does matter?

Okay, according to some research in the cognitive and brain sciences unit in Cambridge, UK, they found that there is this thing called the brain's G-spot. This spot was identified to determine a person's general intelligence, which is that IQ tests are thought to measure. Let me use an example to explain about this G-spot. A person will feel extremely weak when asked to read a text book at around 2:00 AM, but feel extremely excited when play video games. Why? Because playing game will promote excitement and whilst stimulating the G-spot, and not reading text book at 2:00 AM (this could be referred to hot cognition in psychology). They uses the PET scan to measure different general intelligence activities, but that task did not measure brain intelligence very well. It does not clearly explain what the finding means or what that particular region in the brain does (the region of the brain measured is the lateral frontal cortex, somewhere in the front of the brain). However, the experiment does hint efficiency, connectivity and focused activities may be more important to determine a person's intelligence level than the size of the brain itself. PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography, a type of scan that show how body tissues are working, as well as what they look like.


Caption: a simple sketch of the working memory (WM) model

According to the cognitive psychology handbook, intelligence may be associated to working memory. Working memory originally integrates with the Short Term Memory (STM) and Long Term Memory (LTM). The picture above is a simple sketch of the working memory (WM) to briefly explain what WM is. This in fact is not the real working memory model. The real working memory model (i.e. Baddeley's working memory model) is much more complicated. Both the STM and LTM are processess of the WM. In brief, they are just two separate components found in the working memory. I will explain the working memory in more detail in the next few upcoming posts so stay tune. The working memory is located in the middle of the frontal gyrus (in neuro sciences, the working memory lies in a region near the brain's G spot). Well practiced task will be beneficial for IQ since it increases the processing speed and accuracy. This is also why most people uses the phrase: "Practice makes perfect". In fact, practice do not make perfect, but increases the speed and accuracy of a particular task as mentioned.


Caption: brain structure and regions


Caption: brain regions and processes

As a summary, efficiency, connectivity and focused activities is the nearest possibility to determine a person's IQ level instead of the size of the brain. A group of scientist studied more than 300 children (ranging from age 7 to 18), divided the group into few; high, average, and low IQ childrens. They looked into these students cerebral cortex and found no differences in the overall thickness attained by age 18. Therefore, they conclude that intelligence is a dynamic process related to particularly high level of plasticity.