Press release: "The neural architecture of general knowledge"
Dr. Genç and his colleagues recently published an article in the European Journal of Personality entitled, “The neural architecture of general knowledge”. In this paper, they examined how the structural network of the brain relates to people’s general knowledge. They found that individuals with a more efficient network had better general knowledge than those with a less efficient network. The study was published in the September/October issue of the European Journal of Personality.
The researchers used diffusion tensor imaging (a specific type of magnetic resonance imaging) to examine the brains of 324 men and women, giving them insight in the pathways of nerve fibers in the brain. The participants also completed the Bochum Knowledge Test, a general knowledge test. Each brain then received an individual score via mathematical algorithms on the overall efficiency of the structural network of nerve fibers, and these scores were then examined in relation to their performance on the knowledge test. The results indicated that people with more efficiently wired brains had more general knowledge. The researchers speculate that this may be because knowledge is stored in separate units across the brain. Individuals with more efficiently wired brains find it easier to recollect the gathered knowledge and also to integrate pieces of information with each other.
This picture illustrates the nerve fibers of the brain. These nerve fibers were generated by the magnetic resonance technique of "Diffusion Tensor Imaging". The view on the brain is from above where the pathway of the fibers is direction coded, i.e. in red (left-right), green (front-back) and blue (top-bottom).
Correspondence about this study may be addressed to the first author, Dr. Erhan Genç, Department of Biopsychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. Dr. Genç can be contacted via email on erhan.genc@rub.de.