Intelligence and your perfect sense of pace

Think you’ve got rhythm? Well, now there’s a reason beyond musicianship and dance-floor bravado to claim an accurate sense of the beat:

Good rhythm is correlated with general intelligence.

Fredrik Ullen and a team of researchers in Sweden found that people who most accurately tap out a beat also do the best on intelligence tests. They suggest that the brain’s sense of timing might underlie higher intellectual functions. The paper was published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience.

From the press release on physorg:

“It’s interesting as the task didn’t involve any kind of problem solving,” says Fredrik Ullén at Karolinska Institutet, who led the study with Guy Madison at Umeå University. “Irregularity of timing probably arises at a more fundamental biological level owing to a kind of noise in brain activity.”

According to Fredrik Ullén, the results suggest that the rhythmic accuracy in brain activity observable when the person just maintains a steady beat is also important to the problem-solving capacity that is measured with intelligence tests.

“We know that accuracy at millisecond level in neuronal activity is critical to information processing and learning processes,” he says.

They also found differences in the anatomy of the prefrontal cortex – a part of your brain involved in many complex cognitive tasks. The subjects with good rhythmic accuracy and intelligence had more white matter volume in the prefrontal cortex.

As is common with an interesting result, this study prompts many new questions:

Does this correlation arise out of a difference in noisiness at the neuronal level, as the release suggests? Or do keeping time and intelligence both arise from higher level cognitive processes, like attention and working memory?

Can intelligence be altered by improving rhythm? Is Ringo Starr actually the smartest in the band?

More white matter in the prefrontal cortex implies more myelin, which aids in fast and reliable communication between neurons. Does the additional myelination improve communication between neurons to the point that rhythm and intelligence are both enhanced?

Keeping Your Brain Fit

By Lumos Labs Science Associate Paul Li, MS Neuroscience.

Recently, U.S. News did their cover story on Keeping Your Brain Fit. As you the readers might already know, there are ways to thwart the cognitive decline that often comes with aging, but there is no silver bullet that works every time for each person. It is possible to slow down the progression by eating the right foods, exercising regularly, and playing brain training games – all of which are beneficial in keeping your brain fit and healthy. Although the article highlights its share of critics who prefers one activity over the other, your brain lasts longest with a healthy combination of brain healthy activity. Research has also shown that mental decline begins as early as in the third decade of life, so it would be wise for even young adults to work towards a healthy brain early to help avoid ‘losing it’ later.

Our new brain health blog

As you can see, we’ve got a new and improved design for the Brain Health blog (thanks Josh and Dave). Let us know if you find changes you do or do not like, or if there’s anything that doesn’t seem to be working properly.

Brain Food – Fruit for Thought

More evidence that you should eat fruit. Cornell’s Chang Y. Lee found that the antioxidants in fruit prevented neurons from dying when exposed to oxidative stress.

“Our results suggest that fresh apples, banana and orange in our daily diet along with other fruits may protect neuron cells against oxidative stress-induced neurotoxicity and may play an important role in reducing the risk of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease,” Lee concluded.

Brain performance enhancer: Caffeine

Chris Chatham at Developing Intelligence published a great guide to getting the most cognitive benefit out of caffeine. We’ve mentioned before that caffeine can improve memory and reaction time and that coffee might be protective against dementia. But we haven’t yet gotten into the implementation – what’s the best way to consume caffeine for sustained cognitive performance? Chris outlines the approach indicated by empirical research in Caffeine: A User’s Guide to Getting Optimally Wired.

One of his stronger points is the value of small and frequent doses of caffeine rather than a venti chug to start the day. Caffeine reaches the brain quickly, and then your system begins to gradually remove it, so you may be best off having about a quarter-cup each hour over the course of the time you want to be alert.

Keep in mind that there are cardiovascular risks to too much caffeine use, and that it is an addictive drug. That said, Lumos Labs averages about 3 cups/day – close to the US average of 3.1/day – and we show no signs of slowing down.

Brain training in the news

Brain fitness and cognitive training articles appearing in the past few weeks have prominently featured Lumos Labs. Here are a few of our favorite:

Reader’s Digest: HealthSmart

Dominic Cadden writes about his experience completing the Lumosity training program.

Fox News: Website of the Day

Check out Doug Delony’s broadcast of Lumosity: “Games for a happy Friday”

New Scientist

Graham Lawton did an excellent assessment of the current state of the science behind brain training products.

Women’s Health Mag

Tips to avoid forgetting and losing stuff – Lumosity helps you avoid losing memory itself.

The Color Blind Advantage

I used to think I had Ted Williams-caliber vision (a doctor said that, and it was memorable for a 10-yr old aspiring baseball player). When dreams of baseball stardom started to seem less likely, I began to think I’d make a good pilot. Though I’ve long since chosen a different direction, I still took pride in having a top-notch visual system.

And then I discovered at the age of 28 that I’m colorblind. How did that go undetected for so long? Well, it’s not that I can’t detect colors – I can differentiate and name them well enough – but when given a color blindness test like the one below, I fail miserably.

Can you read the number in this circle?

For most people, the number “74″ jumps off the page, distinct and obvious – but not for those who are color blind. I see a “21″, and someone with more severe color blindness won’t see any numbers.

Color blindness is most often due to missing 1 or more of the 3 different types of cells that detect colors (aka “photoreceptors”) found in a normal eye. Each photoreceptor is tuned to respond to a different wavelength of light, and your brain can interpret their responses by combining the information from each type of photoreceptor, ideally leading to the perception of a vast array of colors.

I’m likely short on 1 type of photoreceptor making me red-green color blind, but it didn’t take long to uncover a rationale suggesting that colorblindness could be an advantage!

In WWII analysis of aerial photographs, teams that included color-blind people were more successful. Color-blind individuals were able to detect unusual patterns in ways that normal-vision people couldn’t.

And more recently, researchers from the University of Calgary showed that color-blind monkeys are better at hunting insects. The monkey’s without color vision caught more insects, presumably because they could see through the insects’ camouflage. Evolutionary speculators have suggested that a group of hunters that contained at least one person who is color blind would be more successful, and so this trait might continue to be selected for in a portion of the population.

It seems that under some circumstances colors can be distracting and actually detract from our ability to see subtle variations in texture and brightness. While it may still be more desirable to have full color vision, the 10% of males who are color blind do have some consolation: We will never starve for lack of camouflaged insects.

More on color vision

Go Fish!

By Lumos Labs Science Associate Paul Li, MS Neuroscience.

One of the top brain foods you can have in your diet is fish. This brain food, also in pill form, is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids that the body alone cannot produce. Recently, scientists from UCLA further discovered that omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, increases the production of a protein called LR11, which is known to destroy the beta amyloid plaques that are associated with Alzheimer’s. A fish diet may possibly be a deterrent against this debilitating neurodegenerative disease. With that said, take care of that brain of yours by eating right and exercising, both physically and mentally.