People who score higher in the intelligence test respond to simple questions more quickly than other less intelligent subjects. However, as the problems become more challenging, the situation is somewhat reversed, at least for some question types. Faced with these more complex problems, the smart people they take their time but are much more likely to get the answer right. The findings overturn some assumptions and could justify changes in testing procedures, but they were supported by brain network models that replicate individuals’ brain connectivity.
The teacher Petra Ritter of the Berlin Institute of Health in the charity is trying to implement simulations that mimic the characteristics of individual human brains. To make these brain network models accurate, Ritter and colleagues used data from 1,176 participants in the study Human Connectome Projectwhich it uses fMRI to observe the way the brain connections they engage when they are called up and when they are at rest. In Nature Communicationswhere the study was published, a mix of expected and very surprising results were announced.
The tests involved showing participants a series of patterns and asking them to identify the rules behind them, starting with an easy task and getting progressively more difficult. The intelligence quotient (IQ) of all participants were measured using conventional tests, and Ritter explored the relationship between activation models, IQ measured e test performance. The professor commented in a statement: “It is the right excitation-inhibition balance of neurons that influences decision making and more or less allows a person to solve problems”.
The smartest participants, who were also generally the ones with the most brain synchronization, were able to quickly see the solution when faced with simple problems. However, as the difficulties increased, their great advantage was that they had the patience to wait until all areas of the brain had done the required processing, rather than jumping when only part of it had been resolved.
When faced with more difficult questions, timing correlates with slower answers. The professor Michael Schirnerthe lead author of the study, said that: “In more demanding tasks, it is necessary to store previous progress in working memory while exploring other solution paths and then integrate them into each other. This collection of evidence for a particular solution can sometimes take longer, but it also leads to better results.”