If you have been lying about your IQ, that needs to stop now! Why, you ask? Well, a new study that we have come across claims that a newly designed computing tool can actually predict a person's intelligence. This can be done from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of their resting state brain activity. Sounds complicated?
It’s quite to the point actually. The fMRI develops a map of brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow to specific brain regions. "We found if we just have people lie in the scanner and do nothing while we measure the pattern of activity in their brain, we can use the data to predict their intelligence," said co-author Ralph Adolphs from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Post tracking the complex patterns of activity in the human brain, the researchers downloaded the brain scans and intelligence scores from almost 900 individuals. They found that after processing the data, the algorithm was able to predict intelligence at statistically significant levels across the subjects.
"The information that we derive from the brain measurements can be used to account for about 20 per cent of the variance in intelligence we observed in our subjects," said Julien Dubois from the Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre. This algorithm is doing something scientists haven’t been able to do for a long time. It’s nearly impossible for a scientist to look at a brain scan and tell how intelligent a person is, the researchers said. The researchers also conducted a parallel study, using the same test population and approach, that attempted to predict personality traits from fMRI brain scans. However, it turns out that it becomes way more difficult to predict personality as compared to intelligence! The two studies are yet to be published in separate journals, Personality Neuroscience and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
