A study of 152 brain-damaged Vietnam War veterans has createdthe first map of emotional intelligence, that is, the ability to recognize our own feelings, the feelings of others, motivate ourselves and properly manage the relationships we have with others.
The study reveals that general – or “universal” – intelligence and emotional intelligence are quite overlapping, both in the brain and in behavior in everyday life. Thus, the highest scores in tests of general intelligence would correspond to samples of being endowed with emotional intelligence.
To map all of this in the brain, American neuroscientist Aron K. Barbey and his colleagues usedcomputed tomography scannersto obtain a three-dimensional map of the cerebral cortex, which they then divided into voxels – units of volume. By associating the cognitive abilities that were impaired in the patients with certain groups of voxels, the researchers were able to identifywhich areas of the brain play a key role in aspects of so-called “general” intelligence, emotional intelligence, or both. The results, released in the magazineSocial Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, show that the frontal cortex and the parietal cortex are fundamental in both types. The first deals with regulating behavior, attention, planning and participates in memory; The parietal cortex, for its part, integrates information from the senses and helps to process language and coordinate body movements.
“Historicallygeneral intelligence has been considered in isolation from social and emotional intelligence; but now we have the demonstration that human intelligence also depends on how we interact with other people “, suggests Barbey, referring to the fact that both types are interdependent at the brain level in a healthy mind.” We are social beings, and in addition to cognitive skills we need apply skills to social situations to be able to understand others and move in the society in which we live “, the researcher points out.
