Category: Intelligence

Whether you call it the Flutie Effect or the Jimmer Bump, a banner year in NCAA men's basketball or football is followed by a flood of prospective students.

Economists at Brigham Young University and the University of Chicago studied where students chose to send their SAT scores. Universities received approximately 10 percent more scores from prospective students following a chamionship season.

Initially, these surges are fueled by certain types of students: out-of-staters, males, black students and those who played sports in high school. But teams who advance to the title game bring enough exposure to their university to attract more applicants of all demographic backgrounds.

"Males seem to have the tournament on their radar early on, but if your team gets to the championship, males and females are influenced about equally," said Jaren Pope, a BYU economist who authored the study with his brother Devin, an economist at the University of Chicago.

The findings appear online in an article forthcoming in the Journal of Sports Economics titled "Understanding College Applications: Why College Sports Success Matters."

Coincidentally, the first-year students now arriving at BYU for orientation are perhaps representative of these findings. This class of students applied to colleges after Jimmermania and BYU's 2011 run to the Sweet 16. According to the Pope brothers' analysis, advancing that far in the tournament ordinarily translates to four percent more applicants. BYU's admissions office actually saw more than that, but is cautious about crediting the increase entirely to Jimmermania.

"There is already a certain type of student that is likely to come here," Pope said. "But there were probably some on the margin that were choosing between BYU and another school and decided 'Oh, wow, it's gonna be fun to be at BYU.'"

The Pope brothers examined eight years of data from the SAT to understand which schools prospective college students chose to send their SAT scores. While their own previous research has noted that sports success draws more student applications, this new study tells more about the kinds of students who are influenced by success in men's basketball and football.

For example, one of the questions they asked was whether sports success tends to be more influential among high-achieving or low-achieving students. They found that about two-thirds of this pool of students score below the average SAT score, but even some of the top-performing students were attracted by winning teams.

"There are some really high-quality students that seem to be affected by the sports success," Pope said.

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Journal Reference:

1. D. G. Pope, J. C. Pope. Understanding College Application Decisions: Why College Sports Success Matters. Journal of Sports Economics, 2012; DOI: 10.1177/1527002512445569

Most professional English football teams don't comply with international guidelines on concussion among players, which ensure they are safe to return to play, indicates research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The Consensus in Sport (CIS) guidelines were developed following the first international conference on concussion in sport in 2001.

This was convened by the International Ice Hockey Federation, FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association), and the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission in recognition of the inevitability of concussion in high speed and contact sports.

The guidelines were further developed at subsequent conferences in 2004 and 2008. They now standardise the definition of concussion, and broaden it to include being knocked to the ground and dazed.

They stipulate that all players must undergo cognitive assessment and be thoroughly tested for concussive symptoms before the season starts, with those deemed to be concussed gradually returned to play, and only when free of all symptoms.

After a high profile incident in 2007 during a cup final, the Football Association clarified its recommendations on concussion for club medical officers.

But there is no guidance on how to recognise the signs and symptoms of concussion or any requirement for club doctors to demonstrate any expertise in concussion management, the authors point out.

So they sent a questionnaire to all 92 clubs in the English Football League, which is divided up into four separate leagues — Premier League; Championship League ; and Leagues 1 and 2 — at the start of the 2009/10 football season.

The response rate was 39%, with similar proportions of completed questionnaires returned by each of the leagues.

Around one in four (28%) clubs across all the leagues said that they had not heard of the CIS guidelines.

Fewer than half (44%) of the Premiership teams routinely carried out a cognitive assessment before the season got under way, although they completed significantly more of these than any of the other leagues. Similarly, only one in 10 teams carried out a concussion symptom score.

Following a concussion, over half the Premier League and Championship clubs used tests that measure both cognitive assessment and symptoms, as recommended.

But only half of the teams who were aware of the CIS guidelines did so. And few teams deployed the pre-season cognitive assessment in their evaluation.

The recommended stepwise return to play, with a review of symptoms every 24 hours, was not widely enforced.

Almost half (44%) of teams did not comply with CIS guidelines, which indicate that the earliest a player could return to play would be 6 days, and that no fixed rest period should be applied.

The length of rest periods varied from 3 to 28 days, the survey responses showed, with fixed rest periods applied by several teams in the lower leagues and one premier league club enforcing a two week rest period.

Relying on subjective assessments by the team doctor or the player to make return to play decisions could be unsafe, say the authors, who emphasise: "It is widely accepted that medical teams are under constant pressure to return players to fitness as soon as possible."

The responses indicated that clubs didn't take concussion sufficiently seriously to dedicate resource to it, yet it accounts for up to 11% of all footballing injuries, and including training, works out at one incident almost every month for a squad of 25 players, say the authors.

"It is in the interests of clubs and their players for the Football Association to endorse the CIS guidelines [which are] followed by the majority of world sporting organisations," they conclude.

The physical benefits of the Olympic sports are pretty obvious: strength, endurance and agility, to name a few. But did you know they also can help the brain? Mayo Clinic research shows that any exercise that gets the heart pumping may reduce the risk of dementia and mild cognitive impairment — and slow those conditions if they start. Aerobic exercise also can boost your mood.

A team coordinated by Mathias Pessiglione, Inserm researcher at the "Centre de recherche en neurosciences de la Pitié Salpêtrière" (Inserm/UPMC-Université Pierre and Marie Curie/CNRS) have identified the part of the brain driving motivation during actions that combine physical and mental effort: the ventral striatum.

The results of their study were published in PLoS Biology on 21 February 2012.

The results of an activity (physical or mental) partly depend on the efforts devoted to it, which may be incentive-motivated. For example, a sportsperson is likely to train with "increased intensity" if the result will bring social prestige or financial gain. The same can be said for students who study for their exams with the objective of succeeding in their professional career. What happens when physical and mental efforts are required to reach an objective?

Mathias Pessiglione and his team from Inserm unit 975 "Centre de recherche en neurosciences de la Pitié-Salpêtrière" examined whether mental and physical efforts are driven by a motivation 'centre' or whether they are conducted by different parts of the brain. The researchers studied the neural mechanisms resulting from activities that combine both action and cognition.

To this end, a series of 360 tests, combining mental and physical effort, were performed whilst being monitored by a scanner. The 20 voluntary participants were placed in the supine position, with their heads in a functional MRI scanner. They then had to complete a series of tasks through which they could accumulate winnings. However, in each series the winnings were limited to the first incorrect response. The tasks combined cognitive and motor actions. The participants had to find the highest number from among different-sized numbers and then select it by squeezing a handle located by their left or right hand (depending on the number's location). At the end of the test, a winnings summary was displayed to motivate the participant.

Using images obtained from the MRI scans taken during the test, Mathias Pessiglione and his team identified a general motivational system in the depths of the brain, i.e. a structure capable of activating any effort type, both mental (concentrating on the task in hand) or physical (lifting a load). The researchers observed that the ventral striatum was activated in proportion to the amount of money involved: the higher the degree of motivation, the higher the activation level. Furthermore, the ventral striatum is connected to the median part of the striatum (the caudate nucleus) when the task to be performed is cognitively difficult (when the physical size and the numerical value of the numbers did not correspond). This ventral region solicits the lateral part of the striatum (the putamen) when the difficulty is motor-related (when the handle had to be squeezed very tightly).

The researchers suggest that the expectation of a reward is encoded in the ventral striatum, which can then drive either the motor or cognitive part of the striatum, depending on the task, in order to boost performance. "The ventral striatum may commute connections in accordance with the request, i.e. enhance the neuronal activity in the caudate nucleus for a cognitive operation and in the putamen for a physical action" explains Mathias Pessiglione.

Hailed since ancient times for its medicinal properties, we still have a lot to learn about the effects of rosemary. Now researchers writing in Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology, published by SAGE, have shown for the first time that blood levels of a rosemary oil component correlate with improved cognitive performance.

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is one of many traditional medicinal plants that yield essential oils. But exactly how such plants affect human behaviour is still unclear. Mark Moss and Lorraine Oliver, working at the Brain, Performance and Nutrition Research Centre at Northumbria University, UK designed an experiment to investigate the pharmacology of 1,8-cineole (1,3,3-trimethyl-2-oxabicyclo[2,2,2]octane), one of rosemary's main chemical components.

The investigators tested cognitive performance and mood in a cohort of 20 subjects, who were exposed to varying levels of the rosemary aroma. Using blood samples to detect the amount of 1,8-cineole participants had absorbed, the researchers applied speed and accuracy tests, and mood assessments, to judge the rosemary oil's affects.

Results indicate for the first time in human subjects that concentration of 1,8-cineole in the blood is related to an individual's cognitive performance — with higher concentrations resulting in improved performance. Both speed and accuracy were improved, suggesting that the relationship is not describing a speed-accuracy trade off. Meanwhile, although less pronounced, the chemical also had an effect on mood. However, this was a negative correlation between changes in contentment levels and blood levels of 1,8-cineole, which is particularly interesting because it suggests that compounds given off by the rosemary essential oil affect subjective state and cognitive performance through different neurochemical pathways. The oil did not appear to improve attention or alertness, however.

Terpenes like 1,8-cineole can enter the blood stream via the nasal or lung mucosa. As small, fat-soluble organic molecules, terpenes can easily cross the blood-brain barrier. Volatile 1,8-cineole is found in many aromatic plants, including eucalyptus, bay, wormwood and sage in addition to rosemary, and has already been the subject of a number of studies, including research that suggests it inhibits acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrylcholinesterase enzymes, important in brain and central nervous system neurochemistry: rosemary components may prevent the breakdown of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.

"Only contentedness possessed a significant relationship with 1,8-cineole levels, and interestingly to some of the cognitive performance outcomes, leading to the intriguing proposal that positive mood can improve performance whereas aroused mood cannot," said Moss.

Typically comprising 35-45% by volume of rosemary essential oil, 1,8-cineole may possess direct pharmacological properties. However, it is also possible that detected blood levels simply serve as a marker for relative levels of other active compounds present in rosemary oil, such as rosmarinic acid and ursolic acid, which are present at much lower concentrations.

It takes two to tango. Two hemispheres of your brain, that is. USC researchers are working to pin down the exact source of creativity in the brain and have found that the left hemisphere of your brain, thought to be the logic and math portion, actually plays a critical role in creative thinking.

"We want to know how does creativity work in the brain?" said Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, assistant professor of neuroscience at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

If you paint or sculpt, you may think of yourself as right-brained. The right hemisphere of your brain often is thought to be the creative half, while the left is thought to be the rational, logical side.

But a new study from a team led by Aziz-Zadeh demonstrated that while the right half of your brain performs the bulk of the heavy lifting when you're being creative, it does call for help from the left half of your noggin.

The study, which focuses on how the brain tackles visual creative tasks, supports previous findings about how the brain handles musical improvisation.

Co-authored by USC graduate student Sook-Lei Liew and USC undergraduate Francesco Dandekar, the study was posted online last month in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

"We need both hemispheres for creative processing," Aziz-Zadeh said.

The USC scholar and her team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of architecture students, who tend to be visually creative.

While being scanned, the subjects were shown three shapes: a circle, a C and an 8. They then were asked to visualize images that could be made by rearranging those shapes — for example, a face (with the 8 on its side to become the eyes, the C on its side to become the smiling mouth and the circle in the center as the nose).

The students also were asked to simply try to piece three geometric shapes together with their minds and see if they formed a square or a rectangle — a task that requires similar spatial processing but not necessarily creativity.

Even though it mainly was handled by the right hemisphere, the creative task actually lit up the left hemisphere more than the noncreative task. The results indicated that the left brain potentially is a crucial supporter of creativity in the brain.

Aziz-Zadeh said she plans to explore more of how different types of creativity (painting, acting, singing) are created by the brain, what they have in common and what makes them different.

Support for the research came from the Brain and Creativity Institute at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the USC Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, the National Science Foundation and the USC Provost's Ph.D. Fellowship program.

Friendly to a fault, yet tense? A personality profile marked by overly gregarious yet anxious behavior is rooted in abnormal development of a circuit hub buried deep in the front center of the brain, say scientists at the National Institutes of Health. They used three different types of brain imaging to pinpoint the suspect brain area in people with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder characterized by these behaviors. Matching the scans to scores on a personality rating scale revealed that the more an individual with Williams syndrome showed these personality/temperament traits, the more abnormalities there were in the brain structure, called the insula.

"Scans of the brain's tissue composition, wiring, and activity produced converging evidence of genetically-caused abnormalities in the structure and function of the front part of the insula and in its connectivity to other brain areas in the circuit," explained Karen Berman, M.D., of the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Berman, Drs. Mbemda Jabbi, Shane Kippenham, and colleagues, report on their imaging study in Williams syndrome online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This line of research offers insight into how genes help to shape brain circuitry that regulates complex behaviors — such as the way a person responds to others — and thus holds promise for unraveling brain mechanisms in other disorders of social behavior," said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.

Williams syndrome is caused by the deletion of some 28 genes, many involved in brain development and behavior, in a particular section of chromosome 7. Among deficits characteristic of the syndrome are a lack of visual-spatial ability — such as is required to assemble a puzzle — and a tendency to be overly-friendly with people, while overly anxious about non-social matters, such as spiders or heights. Many people with the disorder are also mentally challenged and learning disabled, but some have normal IQs.

Previous imaging studies by the NIMH researchers found abnormal tracts of the neuronal fibers that conduct long-distance communications between brain regions — likely resulting from neurons migrating to the wrong destinations during early development.

Evidence suggests that genes influence our temperament and the development of mental disorders via effects on brain circuits that regulate behavior. Yet direct demonstration of this in humans has proven elusive. Since the genetic basis of Williams syndrome is well known, it offers a unique opportunity to explore such effects with neuroimaging, reasoned the researchers.

Although the insula had not previously been studied in such detail in the disorder, it was known to be related to brain circuitry and certain behaviors, such as empathy, which is also highly prominent in the disorder. Berman and colleagues hypothesized that the insula's anatomy, function and connectivity would predict patients' scores for Williams syndrome-associated traits on personality rating scales. Fourteen intellectually normal Williams syndrome participants and 23 healthy controls participated in the study.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed that patients had decreased gray matter — the brain's working tissue — in the bottom front of the insula, which integrates mood and thinking. By contrast, they had increased gray matter in the top front part of the insula, which has been linked to social/emotional processes.

Diffusion tensor imaging, which by detecting the flow of water in nerve fibers can identify and measure the connections between brain areas, showed reduced white matter — the brain's long-distance wiring — between thinking and emotion hubs.

Tracking radioactively-tagged water in order to measure brain blood flow at rest, via positron emission tomography (PET), exposed activity aberrations consistent with the MRI abnormalities. The PET scans also revealed altered functional coupling between the front of the insula and key structures involved in thinking, mood and fear processing. These structural and functional abnormalities in the front of the insula correlated with the Williams syndrome personality profile.

"Our findings illustrate how brain systems translate genetic vulnerability into behavioral traits," explained Berman.

Cognitive function may be a better indicator of the impact of aging on an economy than age-distribution, with chronological age imposing less of a social and economic burden if the population is "functionally" younger, according to a study published December 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study finds that one standardized indicator of cognitive ability — memory recall — is better in countries where education, nutrition, and health standards are generally higher. Aging populations are of concern to many countries as it is often assumed that ageing necessarily implies a greater cost to society in terms of aged care, age related disease, and reduced capacity to contribute to society.

However this research suggests that the effects of chronological aging are uneven across nations and that in some countries, particularly more affluent ones that are able to invest in early and sustained education and health programs, cognitive function and thus the ability to live healthy, productive lives, is maintained longer.

"Demographic indicators of the economic impact of an aging population typically rely on measures based on populations' age-distribution, expressed as the Old Age Dependency Ratio (OADR). Whilst this is helpful measurement it does not include information on individual characteristics, other than age," says lead author Vegard Skirbekk from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

"We believe cognitive function can provide a new and comparable measure of how a region or a nation's population may age. Such information can inform early intervention in the education and health systems to try and improve cognitive performance, ultimately reducing the burden of aging."

"For example, in northern Europe or the United States where there is a relatively large population over the age of 65, we found that cognitive function is higher for this age group than for the same age group in Mexico, India and China. Overall, even though Europe and the US may be chronologically older they are 'functionally' younger."

Cognitive ability levels are also good indicators of individual productivity and this has direct relevance to the economic and business activities within a country.

The authors suggest that the difference in cognitive function may be explained by the fact that seniors in some regions of the world experience better conditions during their childhood and adult life; including nutrition, duration and quality of schooling, exposure to disease, and physical and social activity.

The study involved surveys of people aged over fifty years from a range of countries including the United States, Mexico, India, Japan, and across Europe, from both urban and rural areas. The surveys measured, among other parameters, short-term memory, or the ability to immediately recall words read-out to the participants. Immediate recall has been shown to influence decision-making ability and the risk of dementia.

According to the authors, because aspects of cognitive functioning at older ages can now, for the first time, be more readily compared, such a measurement may also serve as a benchmark for countries to assess the burden of aging across nations.

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Journal Reference:

1. V. Skirbekk, E. Loichinger, D. Weber. Variation in cognitive functioning as a refined approach to comparing aging across countries. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1112173109

Creative people are more likely to cheat than less creative people, possibly because this talent increases their ability to rationalize their actions, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"Greater creativity helps individuals solve difficult tasks across many domains, but creative sparks may lead individuals to take unethical routes when searching for solutions to problems and tasks," said lead researcher Francesca Gino, PhD, of Harvard University.

Gino and her co-author, Dan Ariely, PhD, of Duke University, conducted a series of five experiments to test their thesis that more creative people would cheat under circumstances where they could justify their bad behavior. Their research was published online in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology^®.

The researchers used a series of recognized psychological tests and measures to gauge research subjects' creativity. They also tested participants' intelligence. In each of the five experiments, participants received a small sum for showing up. Then, they were presented with tasks or tests where they could be paid more if they cheated. For example, in one experiment, participants took a general knowledge quiz in which they circled their answers on the test paper. Afterward, the experimenter told them to transfer their answers to "bubble sheets" — but the experimenter told the group she had photocopied the wrong sheet and that the correct answers were lightly marked. The experimenters also told participants they would be paid more for more correct answers and led them to believe that they could cheat without detection when transferring their answers. However, all the papers had unique identifiers.

The results showed the more creative participants were significantly more likely to cheat, and that there was no link between intelligence and dishonesty — i.e., more intelligent but less creative people were not more inclined toward dishonesty.

In another experiment, test subjects were shown drawings with dots on two sides of a diagonal line and asked to indicate whether there were more dots on the left side or right side. In half of 200 trials, it was virtually impossible to tell whether there were more dots on one side or another. However, participants were told they'd be paid 10 times as much (5 cents vs. 0.5 cents) for each time they said there were more dots on the right side. As predicted, the more creative participants were significantly more likely to give the answer that paid more.

"Dishonesty and innovation are two of the topics most widely written about in the popular press," the authors wrote. "Yet, to date, the relationship between creativity and dishonest behavior has not been studied empirically. … The results from the current article indicate that, in fact, people who are creative or work in environments that promote creative thinking may be the most at risk when they face ethical dilemmas."

The authors concede some important limitations in their work, most notably that they created situations in which participants were tempted by money to cheat. They suggested that future research should investigate whether creativity would lead people to satisfy selfish, short-term goals rather than their higher aspirations when faced with self-control dilemmas, such as eating a slice of cake when trying to lose weight.

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Journal Reference:

1. Francesca Gino, Dan Ariely. The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011; DOI: 10.1037/a0026406

— Alzheimer's disease is characterized by abnormal proteins that stick together in little globs, disrupting cognitive function (thinking, learning, and memory). These sticky proteins are mostly made up of beta-amyloid peptide. A better understanding of these proteins, how they form, and how they affect brain function will no doubt improve the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

To this end, a research team led by Stuart A. Lipton, M.D., Ph.D. at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) found that beta-amyloid-induced destruction of synapses — the connections that mediate communication between nerve cells — is driven by a chemical modification to an enzyme called Cdk5. The team found that this altered form of Cdk5 (SNO-Cdk5) was prevalent in human Alzheimer's disease brains, but not in normal brains. These results, published online the week of August 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that SNO-Cdk5 could be targeted for the development of new Alzheimer's disease therapies.

Cdk5 is an enzyme known to play a role in normal neuronal survival and migration. In this study, Dr. Lipton and colleagues found that beta-amyloid peptides, the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, trigger Cdk5 modification by a chemical process called S-nitrosylation. In this reaction, nitric oxide (NO) is attached to the enzyme, producing SNO-Cdk5 and disrupting its normal activity.

"After NO is attached to Cdk5, it then jumps like a 'hot potato' to another protein called Drp1, disrupting its function and fragmenting mitochondria, the energy powerhouse of nerve cells. When the mitochondria are damaged, the synapses, which normally require a lot of energy for their function, are destroyed. This scenario disrupts communication between nerve cells, and thus memory and cognitive ability in Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Lipton, professor and director of Sanford-Burnham's Del E. Webb Neuroscience, Aging and Stem Cell Research Center. Dr. Lipton is also a neurologist who sees Alzheimer's disease patients in his own clinical practice, and is credited with characterizing and developing memantine (Namenda®), the latest FDA-approved drug for Alzheimer's disease.

In the current study, Cdk5 is shown to perform a new function not previously known — the ability to transfer NO from one protein to another. Until now, Cdk5 was only known to influence the function of other proteins by tagging them with phosphate groups in a process known as phosphorylation. The new study shows that the addition of NO sends Cdk5 into overdrive and allows it to also S-nitrosylate other proteins, in this case Drp1 on mitochondria. Most notably, the transfer of NO from SNO-Cdk5 to Drp1 triggers the loss of synapses, the part of a nerve cell that transmits electrochemical signals to other nerve cells. Loss of synapses is known to correlate with the degree of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease.

Taking the study a step further, the team compared SNO-Cdk5 levels in brain tissue from healthy people and from Alzheimer's disease patients. SNO-Cdk5 was dramatically elevated in human brains with Alzheimer's disease.

"Our experiments using human brain tissue from patients with Alzheimer's disease give this finding clear clinical relevance," Dr. Lipton said. "SNO-Cdk5 could provide a new target for treating this devastating condition."

As many as 5.3 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's, currently the seventh-leading cause of death in the United States. This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Co-authors include Jing Qu, Tomohiro Nakamura, Gang Cao, Emily A. Holland, Scott R. McKercher, and Stuart A. Lipton, all located at Sanford-Burnham in La Jolla, Calif.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jing Qu, Tomohiro Nakamura, Gang Cao, Emily A. Holland, Scott R. McKercher, and Stuart A. Lipton. S-Nitrosylation activates Cdk5 and contributes to synaptic spine loss induced by β-amyloid peptide. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 15, 2011 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1105172108