Category: Intelligence

University of Manchester scientists, working with colleagues in Edinburgh and Australia, have provided the first direct biological evidence for a genetic contribution to people's intelligence.

Previous studies on twins and adopted people suggested that there is a substantial genetic contribution to thinking skills, but this new study — published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry — is the first to find a genetic contribution by testing people's DNA for genetic variations.

The team studied two types of intelligence in more than 3,500 people from Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Newcastle and Manchester. The paper, by Dr Neil Pendleton and colleagues, found that 40% to 50% of people's differences in these abilities could be traced to genetic differences.

The study examined more than half a million genetic markers on every person in the study. The new findings were made possible using a new type of analysis invented by Professor Peter Visscher and colleagues in Brisbane. As well as the findings in people from Scotland and England, the team checked their results in a separate group of people from Norway.

Dr Pendleton, who led the Manchester team in the Centre for Integrated Genomic Research, said: "This is the first reported research to examine the intelligence of healthy older adults and, using a comprehensive genetic survey, we were able to show a substantial genetic contribution in our ability to think.

"The study confirms the earlier findings of the research in twins. However, that research could not show which genes were or were not contributing to cognitive ability. Our work demonstrates that the number of individual genes involved in intelligence is large, which is similar to other human traits, such as height.

"We can now use the findings to better understand how these genes interact with each other and the environment, which has an equally significant contribution. With our collaborators, we will take this work forward to find the biological mechanisms that could maintain our intellectual abilities and wellbeing in late life. "

The study, in collaboration with Professor Ian Deary at the University of Edinburgh, was funded in Manchester by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Journal Reference:

1. G Davies, A Tenesa, A Payton, J Yang, S E Harris, D Liewald, X Ke, S Le Hellard, A Christoforou, M Luciano, K McGhee, L Lopez, A J Gow, J Corley, P Redmond, H C Fox, P Haggarty, L J Whalley, G McNeill, M E Goddard, T Espeseth, A J Lundervold, I Reinvang, A Pickles, V M Steen, W Ollier, D J Porteous, M Horan, J M Starr, N Pendleton, P M Visscher, I J Deary. Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic. Molecular Psychiatry, 2011; DOI: 10.1038/mp.2011.85

NewsPsychology (July 9, 2011) — Scientists have shed light on why it is easier to learn about things related to what we already know than it is to learn about unfamiliar things, according to a new study. The team says this is a paradox, as very different things are arguably more novel, yet adding to what we already know is so much easier.

Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Tokyo have found that building on existing knowledge activates a key set of genes in the brain.

These ‘plasticity’ genes do not respond so well to subjects about which we know very little, making it harder for us to form new memories about unfamiliar topics.

The team says this could help us understand how professionals acquire their knowledge gradually over time and may inform new educational strategies to boost learning.

The study, conducted in partnership with Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharmaceutical Company, was funded by the Medical Research Council.

The findings have been published in the journal Science.

Professor Richard Morris of the University of Edinburgh, who led the study, said: “This curious effect is seen in a specific part of the cortex whose functions are still poorly understood — so there is still much work to be done. But a combination of biomedical and human brain imaging work has this as a key aim for future research. We also plan to look at how professional knowledge is gradually acquired and organised in the brain.”

Email or share this story:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by newsPsychology staff) from materials provided by University of Edinburgh.

Journal Reference:

1. D. Tse, T. Takeuchi, M. Kakeyama, Y. Kajii, H. Okuno, C. Tohyama, H. Bito, R. G. M. Morris. Schema-Dependent Gene Activation and Memory Encoding in Neocortex. Science, 2011; DOI: 10.1126/science.1205274

NewsPsychology (July 8, 2011) — Chips based on ARM processor technology will be linked together to simulate the highly-complex workings of the brain, whose functionality derives from networks of billions of interacting, highly-connected neurons.

The chips upon which this work critically depends were delivered last month, and have passed their functionality tests with flying colours.

They will form the system architecture for a massive computer, called SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network architecture), which aims to map out the brain’s individual functions.

SpiNNaker could be a vital tool for neuroscientists, psychologists and doctors to help them understand complex brain injuries, diseases and conditions, and identify the most effective therapies.

The University of Manchester was selected to design the system architecture for the project, and received half of the £5m EPSRC grant which supported the work, while the universities of Southampton, Cambridge and Sheffield share the rest to work on other parts of the project.

Even though there will be up to one million ARM processors, — technology used in most of the world’s mobile phones- in the final SpiNNaker machine, computer scientists point out that this will enable them to recreate models of only up to 1% of the human brain.

The researchers, lead by Professor Steve Furber, believe the machine will be a vital tool for neuroscientists and psychologists to test hypotheses on individual brain characteristics.

The key challenge is developing and understanding the information processing of the brain and the extremely high connectivity of the brain cells. There are 100 billion neurons with 1,000 million connections in the human brain. In this system, the neurons emit spikes which are relayed as tiny electrical signals. Each impulse is modelled in SpiNNaker as a ‘packet’ of data, a very-much scaled down version of the way the internet carries information.

This packet is then sent to all connected neurons. Neurons are represented by small simple equations which are solved in real-time by software running on the ARM processors.

The electronic connections in SpiNNaker convey these spikes much quicker than the biological connections in the brain, hence SpiNNaker can transmit spikes as effectively and quickly with many fewer connections.

Test chips were brought out in 2009, but now the full chips, designed in Manchester and manufactured in Taiwan, have been delivered and will allow the scientists to develop much larger systems which can model the brain. Each chip contains 18 ARM processors.

The bespoke microchips are integrated in a single 19mm square package with a second microchip that provides substantial memory using 3D System-in-Package technology from Unisem Europe Ltd, who have packaging facilities in south Wales. This package delivers the computing power of a PC in a tiny space and for around one watt of electrical power.

Professor Furber, from the School of Computer Science, said: “We hope the machine will be able to model important functions of the human brain and help us gain key insights into their principles of operation.

“Developing and understanding the information processing in the brain is the key. We are actively engaging with neuroscientists and psychologists, both here at the University and elsewhere.

“This could ultimately be of great help for patients, for example, who have presented with reading problems caused by strokes or similar brain injuries. Psychologists have already developed neural networks on which they can reproduce the clinical pathologies.

“They then use these networks to test alternative therapies, to identify which is most effective in treating the patient’s symptoms. At present they are limited in the fidelity they can achieve with these networks by the available computer power, but we hope that SpiNNaker will raise that bar a lot higher.

“We don’t know how the brain works as an information-processing system, and we do need to find out. We hope that our machine will enable significant progress towards achieving this understanding.”

ARM was approached in May 2005 to participate in the SpiNNaker project. A subsequent agreement paved the way to make ARM processor Intellectual Property (IP) available to the project, along with ARM cell library IP to aid design and manufacturing. The agreement allowed University of Manchester to manufacture chips for a system with 1 million ARM-based processors, as well as some smaller test systems.

“The ARM architecture is all about enabling the ARM partner ecosystem to produce smarter systems that are optimized for performance and power consumption,” commented Mike Muller, Chief Technical Officer, ARM.”SpiNNaker seeks to create a working model of the ultimate smart system, the human brain. Steve is part of the ARM family, so this project was a perfect way to partner with him and Manchester University, and for ARM to encourage leading research in the UK.”

Email or share this story:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by newsPsychology staff) from materials provided by University of Manchester, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

NewsPsychology (June 26, 2011) — A University of Colorado Boulder research team has developed a new software program allowing neuroscientists to produce single brain images pulled from hundreds of individual studies, trimming weeks and even months from what can be a tedious, time-consuming research process.

The development of noninvasive neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, spurred a huge amount of scientific research and led to substantial advances in the understanding of the human brain and cognitive function. However, instead of having too little data, researchers are besieged with too much, according to Tal Yarkoni, a postdoctoral fellow in CU-Boulder’s psychology and neuroscience department.

The new software developed by Yarkoni and his colleagues can be programmed to comb scientific literature for published articles relevant to a particular topic, and then to extract all of the brain scan images from those articles. Using a statistical process called “meta-analysis,” researchers are then able to produce a consensus “brain activation image” reflecting hundreds of studies at a time.

“Because the new approach is entirely automated, it can analyze hundreds of different experimental tasks or mental states nearly instantaneously instead of requiring researchers to spend weeks or months conducting just one analysis,” said Yarkoni.

Yarkoni is the lead author on a paper introducing the new approach to analyzing brain imaging data that appears in the June 26 edition of the journal Nature Methods. Russell Poldrack of the University of Texas at Austin, Thomas Nichols of the University of Warwick in England, David Van Essen of Washington University in St. Louis and Tor Wager of CU-Boulder contributed to the paper.

Brain scanning techniques such as fMRI have revolutionized scientists’ understanding of the human mind by allowing researchers to peer deep into people’s brains as they engage in mental activities as diverse as reciting numbers, making financial decisions or simply daydreaming. But interpreting the results of brain imaging studies is often more difficult, according to Yarkoni.

“There’s often the perception that what we’re doing when we scan someone’s brain is literally seeing their thoughts and feelings in action, but it’s actually much more complicated,” Yarkoni said. “The colorful images we see are really just estimates, because each study gives us a somewhat different picture. It’s only by combining the results of many different studies that we get a really clear picture of what’s going on.”

The ability to look at many different mental states simultaneously allows researchers to ask interesting new questions. For instance, researchers can pick out a specific brain region they’re interested in and determine which mental states are most likely to produce activation in that region, he said. Or they can calculate how likely a person is to be performing a particular task given their pattern of brain activity.

In their study, the research team was able to distinguish people who were experiencing physical pain during brain scanning from people who were performing a difficult memory task or viewing emotional pictures with nearly 80 percent accuracy. The team expects performance levels to improve as their software develops, and believes their tools will improve researchers’ ability to decode mental states from brain activity.

“We don’t expect to be able to tell what people are thinking or feeling at a very detailed level,” Yarkoni said. “But we think we’ll be able to distinguish relatively broad mental states from one another. And we’re hopeful that might even eventually extend to mental health disorders, so that these tools will be useful for clinical diagnosis.”

Email or share this story:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by newsPsychology staff) from materials provided by University of Colorado at Boulder.

 Psychologists at Northumbria University have launched a commercial software tool to measure brain performance that will aid researchers in higher education and pharmaceutical companies.

The Computerised Mental Performance Assessment (Compass) software — a battery of standardised cognitive tasks and mood measures — is the brainchild of academics Dr Crystal Haskell and Professor David Kennedy and will be sold to other Universities and Educational Institutions.

Created and developed over three years with the help of technicians in the School of Life Sciences' Brain, Performance and Nutrition Centre, the software has already produced a dossier of published research examining the effects of sleep deprivation, nutrients, sage, and red wine on cognitive performance.

Compass tests brain performance via a wide variety of cognitive tests, including word and facial recognition, memory tasks, and response time tests. It can be used to measure the affects of natural chemicals, food chemicals and various stimuli on the brain.

Though software packages incorporating such cognitive tests currently exist, Compass stands out in its flexibility and extensive range of cognitive tasks and mood measures available. The software system was custom designed and programmed to accommodate any experimental situation. Users can develop their own unique suite of tasks for research participants, and the tests can be undertaken by children as well as adults.

Compass has been used by researchers at Northumbria in various studies. One key study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found improvements in participants' brain function following the consumption of polyphenol resveratrol, a molecule found in red wine.

Professor Kennedy, Director of the Brain, Performance and Nutrition Centre, said: "All Psychology departments have a requirement for cognitive testing but many are using systems that need to be programmed specifically for each study. Often this requires the need to use specialist computer programming language and can be very complex.

"Compass pulls together everything that's currently available in the market but with vastly greater capabilities and at a lower price. It has applications for undergraduate, postgraduate and commercially-funded research."

Dr Haskell, Associate Director at the Brain, Performance and Nutrition Centre, added: "One of the great things about Compass is the flexibility of the system, allowing the user to have full control over the design of their research, including customising tasks to suit their own needs. Another key feature of the system is that it allows users to have instant access to their data in the form of an excel sheet — again this affords the user greater control over their own research."

Following the successful three-year development and testing of Compass, the software is now available for other research institutions to purchase.

The academics have worked closely with business consultant Ross Miller, of Miller Reconstruction Ltd, in commercialising the software for a wider market.

He said: "In this century this is the most advanced and comprehensive piece of software of its kind. Compass is very easy to use across all sectors. It has already been utilised very successfully for research within Northumbria University and also in Australia and New Zealand.

"I believe that Compass will make a significant impact on the commercial and academic research market."

Although most teens have the knowledge and reasoning ability to make decisions as rationally as adults, their tendency to make much riskier choices suggests that they still lack some key component of wise decision making. Why is this so? Because adolescents may not bother to use those thinking skills before they act. That's the finding of a new study by researchers at Temple University that appears in the journal Child Development.

"The study's findings have important implications for debates about whether adolescents should be held to the same standards of criminal and other responsibility as adults," according to Dustin Albert, a PhD candidate at Temple who authored the study. "Research charting age differences in such capacities is increasingly being consulted for guidance on social and legal policies concerning adolescents."

The study tested a diverse group of 890 individuals between the ages of 10 and 30, using a computerized test of strategic planning and problem solving called the Tower of London. The test asks individuals to rearrange a stack of three differently colored balls to match a picture of a new arrangement, using as few moves as possible. Test takers have to plan ahead, using a sequence of actions to bridge the gap between the game board and the target board. The study also tested individuals on a battery of tasks related to reasoning, memory, and self-control.

Older test takers did better on the tower test, showing greater ability to plan ahead and solve problems. On the hardest problems, mature performance wasn't seen until at least age 22. Since solving the hardest problems on the test is known to make strong demands on the brain's frontal lobes and teens' frontal lobes are still maturing, this finding wasn't unexpected, according to the researchers.

Follow-up analyses suggested that when older individuals (those in their late teens and early adult years) did better on the tests, it was because of improvements in impulse control, which may have allowed them to plan their solutions more fully before they acted.

"Late developmental improvements in problem solving may have less to do with getting smarter and more to do with a growing capacity to settle down and think things through before acting," according to Albert. "Programs that target adolescents' still-emerging capacity to plan ahead, control their impulses, regulate their emotions, and resist peer pressure may help bolster youngsters' ability to make good decisions in the real world."

Journal Reference:

1. Dustin Albert and Laurence Steinberg. Age Differences in Strategic Planning as Indexed by the Tower of London. Child Development, 16 June 2011 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01613.x

The United States federal government supports many welfare and entitlement programs that attempt to eliminate poverty by providing financial assistance to families in need. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has found that requirements for some of these welfare programs can create stress on families, which can have a negative effect on young children.

Colleen Heflin, an associate professor in the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, studied the cognitive scores of young children whose families receive assistance from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which is the largest federal support program for families with children. Heflin found that the cognitive scores of three-year-old children whose families were on TANF were much lower than children who were not on the program.

"Our findings suggest that the way these assistance programs are structured could have negative effects on child outcomes," Heflin said. "While TANF traditionally has been the main social program to offer financial support to low-income households with children, current program requirements may create pressures that conflict with the objective of improving child outcomes."

For example, families receiving assistance from TANF must comply with requirements ranging from drug testing and attending job development classes to accepting minimum wage jobs that require single mothers to be away from their families during evenings and weekend. By examining results from a Princeton University and Columbia University "Fragile Families and Child Well-Being" study, Heflin found that the stress created within the family when parents are trying to meet these requirements ultimately results in the decreased cognitive scores of the young children. However, Heflin found that social programs based in the tax system, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, show no such negative effects on the children of the household.

"The design of the program matters," Heflin said. "An income-increasing program through the tax system doesn't show these negative effects. However, programs like TANF seem to hurt kids, which is the opposite of what we want our social programs to be doing. We don't create policies to hurt young children, we try to help them. TANF has created enough pressure on families trying to comply with its regulations that it has actually begun to exert a negative force on these families at the margins."

Heflin says the next step in her research will be to study the federal Unemployment Insurance program to see what effects that program has on children. This study was published in Children and Youth Services Review and was co-authored Sharon Kukla-Acevado, an assistant professor at Central Michigan University.

NewsPsychology (June 7, 2011) — According to the American Cancer Society, more than 11.4 million Americans are currently living with cancer. While cancer treatments are plentiful, many have negative side effects. Previous studies have indicated that a significant number of patients who receive chemotherapy also experience cognitive declines, including decreases in verbal fluency and memory. Now, one University of Missouri health psychologist has found evidence that indicates Tai Chi, a Chinese martial art, might help overcome some of those problems.

“Scientists have known for years that Tai Chi positively impacts physical and emotional health, but this small study also uncovered evidence that it might help cognitive functioning as well,” said Stephanie Reid-Arndt, assistant professor and chair of the Department of Health Psychology in the School of Health Professions. “We know this activity can help people with their quality of life in general, and with this new study, we are encouraged about how Tai Chi could also help those who have received chemotherapy. I also hope this encourages more people to think about Tai Chi positively on a broader scale in their lives.”

Tai Chi involves practicing slow motion routines and is based on several principles, including mindfulness, breathing awareness, active relaxation and slow movements. The emphasis on slow movement makes Tai Chi particularly suited to a wide range of fitness levels, which makes it very relevant for those who have had chemotherapy and might be experiencing physical limitations as a result, Reid-Arndt said.

The MU pilot study followed a group of women with a history of chemotherapy. The women participated in a 60-minute Tai Chi class two times a week for 10 weeks. The women were tested on memory, language, attention, stress, mood and fatigue before and after the 10-week sessions. According to Reid-Arndt, the results of the tests indicated that the women had made significant improvements in their psychological health and cognitive abilities.

“Tai Chi really helps individuals focus their attention, and this study also demonstrates how good Tai Chi could be for anyone, whether or not they have undergone treatment for cancer,” Reid-Arndt said. “Due to the small size of this study, we really need to test a larger group of individuals to gain a better understanding of the specific benefits of this activity for patients who have been treated with chemotherapy and how significant these improvements might be.”

The study was published recently in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice.

Email or share this story:

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by newsPsychology staff) from materials provided by University of Missouri-Columbia, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

1. Stephanie A. Reid-Arndt, Sandy Matsuda, Cathy R. Cox. Tai Chi effects on neuropsychological, emotional, and physical functioning following cancer treatment: A pilot study. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, 2011; DOI: 10.1016/j.ctcp.2011.02.005

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of NewsPsychology or its staff.

 Baseline concussion tests given to hundreds of thousands of athletes might, paradoxically, increase risks in some cases, according to a Loyola University Health System researcher.

The tests are likely to have a high "false negative" rate, meaning a test shows an athlete has recovered, when in fact he or she is still experiencing cognitive impairments from the concussion.

This could increase risks by returning to play athletes who might otherwise be withheld for a longer period, neuropsychologist Christopher Randolph, PhD, writes in a recent issue of the journal Current Sports Medicine Reports.

Baseline concussion testing is mandatory in many football, hockey and other programs, from elementary schools to the pros. Such testing provides a baseline score of an athlete's attention span, working memory, reaction time, etc. If the athlete suffers a concussion, he or she retakes the test. If there is a large decrease in the post-concussion score, the athlete typically is benched until the score increases.

Randolph examined the most common baseline test, called ImPACT (Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing). The 20-minute test is taken on a computer.

"There is no evidence to suggest that the use of baseline testing alters any risk from sport-related concussion, nor is there even a good rationale as to how such tests might influence outcome," Randolph writes.

In searching the scientific literature, Randolph could not find a single prospective, controlled study of the current version of ImPACT (version 2.0). Such a study would involve baseline testing a large sample of athletes and then retesting concussive athletes in comparison with noninjured teammates. There was a single prospective, controlled study of an earlier version (1.0), but that study had several serious flaws, Randolph writes.

Studies by independent researchers have found that the reliability of ImPACT testing "appears to be far too low to be useful for individual decision making," Randolph writes.

Using baseline testing with poor sensitivity and inadequate reliability could create a false sense of security that an athlete has recovered from a concussion.

Rather than relying on ImPACT or other baseline tests, team medical personnel "may be better advised to rely upon their own clinical judgment, in conjunction with a validated symptom checklist, in making return-to-play decisions," Randolph writes.

Randolph is a professor in the Department of Neurology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

Journal Reference:

1. Randolph, Christopher. Baseline Neuropsychological Testing in Managing Sport-Related Concussion: Does It Modify Risk?Current Sports Medicine Reports, 10(1):21-26, January/February 2011 DOI: 10.1249/JSR.0b013e318207831d

Even healthy adults with a safe driving record tend to make more driving errors as they age, including potentially dangerous mistakes, such as failing to check blind spots, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association.

Most studies of older drivers have focused on people with dementia or other conditions that might impair their performance behind the wheel. This study, conducted in Australia, comprised 266 volunteers age 70 to 88 who showed no signs of dementia, lived independently and drove at least once a week. The results could have implications for skill-based driving tests and training for older drivers, along with the design of roads, signs and vehicles, the researchers said. The study was published online in the APA journal Neuropsychology.

"We wanted to develop evidence-based measures for detecting unsafe older drivers and show how specific cognitive abilities relate to different types of driving errors," said lead researcher Kaarin J. Anstey, PhD, a psychologist who directs the Aging Research Unit at Australian National University. "We hope that policy decisions in this field will be informed by the best possible science."

Normal aging causes various declines in brain functioning and those distinct changes could affect driving skills, including the ability to focus despite distractions on the road, make quick decisions and avoid other vehicles or pedestrians, the study found.

Study participants completed a battery of cognitive tests and questionnaires about their driving history before they drove on a 12-mile route through city and suburban streets in Brisbane. A professional driving instructor rode in the car, which was equipped with an extra brake on the front passenger side for safety. An occupational therapist sat in the back seat and scored the drivers on various errors, including failure to check blind spots, speeding, sudden braking without cause, veering and tailgating.

"All types of driving errors increased with age, and the errors weren't restricted to a small group of unsafe drivers or those with a history of crashes," Anstey said. "It is important to note that there is a large variation in cognitive ability, so some people still have a high level of functioning in later life even if they have suffered some cognitive declines related to normal aging."

While men tend to think they are better drivers, they didn't fare any better on the tests than women, Anstey found. Blind spot errors were the most common mistake, followed by veering across lanes and failure to use turn signals. During the tests, 17 percent of the drivers made critical and potentially hazardous mistakes that required the driving instructor to hit the brake or grab the steering wheel.

The rate of critical errors during the driving test quadrupled from the youngest group, age 70 to 74, which had an average of less than one critical error, to the oldest group, age 85 to 89 with an average of almost four critical errors. There were no crashes during the tests, but participants who had reported an accident during the five years before the study also had a higher rate of critical errors.

Older drivers could remain safe on the roads longer with training on checking blind spots and other driving skills that might decline with aging, Anstey said. The participants had their vision checked before the driving test, but Anstey said more research is needed to determine if visual ability contributed to the high rate of blind spot errors. The study was co-authored by Joanne Wood, PhD, a professor of optometry at Queensland University of Technology.

Despite the study results, Anstey doesn't believe that driver's licenses should be restricted based on age. "In other research, we have shown that age-based restrictions reduce overall driving rates among older adults, but they don't reduce the rate of driving by those with cognitive impairments," she says. "We need evidence-based driver screening tests along with training for older drivers and alternative transportation for those who can no longer drive safely."

Journal Reference:

1. Kaarin J. Anstey, Joanne Wood. Chronological age and age-related cognitive deficits are associated with an increase in multiple types of driving errors in late life.. Neuropsychology, 2011; DOI: 10.1037/a0023835