A neural basis for general intelligence

Science

Volumn 289, Issue 5478, 2000, Pages 457-460

  Duncan, John ^a   Seitz, Rüdiger J ^b   Kolodny, Jonathan ^a   Bor, Daniel ^a   Herzog, Hans ^c   Ahmed, Ayesha ^a   Newell, Fiona N ^a   Emslie, Hazel ^a  

^a MRC COGNITION AND BRAIN SCIENCES UNIT   (United Kingdom)

^b HEINRICH HEINE UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

^c FORSCHUNGSZENTRUM JÜLICH   (Germany)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BEHAVIOR; BRAIN FUNCTION; BRAIN SCINTISCANNING; COGNITION; INTELLIGENCE; PRIORITY JOURNAL; TASK PERFORMANCE;

ADULT; BRAIN MAPPING; COGNITION; FRONTAL LOBE; HUMANS; INTELLIGENCE; INTELLIGENCE TESTS; MIDDLE AGED; PSYCHOMOTOR PERFORMANCE; RECRUITMENT, NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL; TOMOGRAPHY, EMISSION-COMPUTED;

EID: 0034698209     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5478.457     Document Type: Article

References (37)

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18. Studies were designed to measure correlations between a range of candidate tasks for PET and standard measures of g. In the first study, 60 participants were tested, mean age 42 (range 29 to 51). In three test sessions, participants completed a range of tasks, including high- and low-g spatial (Fig. 1A); high- and low-g verbal (Fig. 1B); and two standard measures of g, Cattell's Culture Fair, Scale 2 Form B (17) (mean score in our sample 34/46 items correct, range 24 to 43), and the verbal scale of the AH4 (18) (mean score in our sample 43/65 items correct, range 27 to 58). To obtain an overall measure of g for each participant, scores on the latter pair of tasks were standardized and averaged. Further data on the two verbal tasks, again completed with a range of other tasks, were obtained in a second study of 46 participants, mean age 42 (range 35 to 51). In this study, the measure of g was Cattell's Culture Fair, Scale 2 Form A, with one section omitted because of overlap with other tasks in the study (mean score in our sample 24/34 items correct, range 12 to 31). For the spatial and verbal tasks, overall mean scores (number correct in 4 min) were as follows: high-g spatial, 12 (range 4 to 18); low-g spatial, 198 (range 162 to 225); high-g verbal, 7 (range 1 to 17); low-g verbal, 41 (range 16 to 75).
19. 15O]butanol was injected into the right brachial vein, flushed with 10 ml of saline. PET scanning and the 2-min task period (see legend to Fig. 1) began at the moment of the injection, so that the participant was fully engaged in the task when radioactivity reached the brain about 11 s later. As previously described (20), rCBF was calculated from the first 40 s of dynamically recorded head uptake data.
20. PET image slices were reconstructed with a Hanning filter to an effective image resolution (full width at half maximum, FWHM) of 9 mm with a slice thickness of 6.4 mm. Further analysis was undertaken with SPM99 (www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm). Scans for each subject were realigned, spatially normalized onto the PET template, and smoothed with an isotropic Gaussian kernel with FWHM set at 16 mm. The SPM99 gray matter threshold was set to its default value. For task comparisons, an ANCOVA (analysis of covariance) model was fitted to the data for each voxel. To remove confounds due to head movement across scans (21), we tested F-value images to determine whether scan order or any of the six head movement parameters were significantly associated with rCBF values (22). Those parameters with significant associations (scan order, translation in z, rotation in x) were set as covariates of no interest, along with global blood flow. In this report we describe only relative increases in rCBF (activations) in high-g tasks. For the spatial contrast only, there were also significant deactivations (high-g < low-g) in regions of motor and medial premotor cortex, reflecting the higher response rate in the low-g task, and bilaterally at the temporoparietal junction.
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26. -1) for each task were as follows: high-g spatial, 49.4; low-g spatial, 49.9; high-g verbal, 49.8; low-g verbal, 49.7.
27. -1) was 49.4.
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