Brain size matters, UCI prof says

Imagine going in for a college admission exam, something like the SAT, but instead they use technology to measure your brain size.

That’s it, you’re done with the test. Universities will contact you to inform you if you’ve been accepted.

This isn’t a reality yet, but with a recent theory proposed by UC Irvine’s Richard Haier and University of New Mexico’s Rex Jung, measuring a student’s intelligence simply on brain size should not be ruled out.

“It’s now clear to us intelligence can be studied scientifically,” said Richard Haier, a longtime human intelligence researcher and UC Irvine professor of psychology in the school of medicine. In other words, one’s intellect isn’t just based on your environment, and some are born with an inherited intellectual advantage over others.

Haier and Jung reviewed 37 brain-imaging studies related to intelligence and came up with the “Parietal-Frontal Integration Theory” that identifies a brain network related to intellect.

It suggests the location and size of intelligence centers in the brain, where thoughts are processed, can tell researchers more about someone’s level of intellect.

Up until now the standard has been IQ tests. Haier believes in them, but this breakthrough could someday provide alternatives.

Their theory, including commentary from 19 researchers, appears online in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Haier and Jung also gained headlines in 2004 when they first concluded that the size of specific areas of gray matter, areas in the brain packed with neurons, correlate directly to intelligence, more so than overall brain size.

It was the first time there was conclusive evidence cognition was not centered solely near the front of the brain.

When the scientists tied their findings with studies 20 years old linking brain efficiency to IQ scores, it became a matter of proving that in portions of the brain both size and speed help determine intelligence.

Now that scientists may be able to identify how and where intelligence works, what next?

“All good science opens up to more questions,” Haier said.

Neuroscientists are already working on the next set of questions — what do you credit more for intelligence: gray matter volume or brain network efficiency?

Brain structure to a degree is inherited, which leads to arguments about whether intelligence is hereditary.

Haier also pointed to questions of whether people can develop more gray matter in vital areas, say, through studying.

That could mean people’s IQs are not limited by genetics, Haier said.

As far as having a brain scan be your SAT for college, Haier’s results linking size to IQ are, he said, “encouraging. We’re working on it.”

JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at [email protected].