Are you a crack at trivia games? Your brain could be wired in unique ways. It’s called ” brain efficiency .”
We all have that friend who “knows everything”, always wins at Trivia and similar board games and can have a conversation on just about any topic (which he seems to be well informed about). It turns out that a new study published in the journalEuropean Journal of Personalityhas concluded thatthese people have brains wired very efficiently.
A group of neuroscientists from the Ruhr-University Bochum and the Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany) analyzed the brains of324 peoplewith varying degrees of general knowledge (such as the type of information that would emerge in a trivia game). The researchers gave these participantsmore than 300 questions on various fields,such as art, architecture and science, to measure the level of general knowledge of individuals, also known assemantic memory.
The researchers used a type of MRI known asmagnetic resonance imaging with diffusion tensorsto track the water flowing around the brain, which generally follows the paved paths between brain cells. So, by tracking the water during the brain scans, the researchers were able to “see” the connections.
The results showed that those subjects who had retained, and could remember, more general knowledgethey had much more efficient brain connections, stronger and shorter connections between brain cells.But the researchers found no association between knowledge and the number of neurons.
It makes sense that people with greater general knowledge have more efficient brain connections, says Erhan Genc, from the Department of Biopsychology at Ruhr University Bochum and leader of the study.
Brain efficiency
General knowledge is stored at various points in the brain. For example, if we ask in what year did the first moon landing take place? We could have “moon” stored in one area, “moon landing” in another, and even the year the event occurred in another. So to answer the question, the brain has to connect “moon” to “moon landing” to “year”, and it does so through these connections. It is logical to think that if the connections are more efficient, that information can travel quickly and easily, the authors clarify.
But it is not clear why some people have more efficient brain connections than others. Perhaps some people are born with a more efficient brain architecture, or perhaps someone who acquires a more general knowledge also generates more efficient connections, because they use this knowledge all the time.
This mystery is unknown, as scientists would need to track individual people over time to see how their brains change, something they hope to see in the future.
“ We assume that a more efficient brain network contributes to better data integration and therefore leads to better results in a general knowledge test,” continues Genç.
Study limitations
However, it is important to note that the sample size was relatively small , and there was only a small difference (although it was significant) that could be attributed to the efficiency of the nerve pathways. Despite this, it is an interesting look at how our brains work.
“Although we can accurately measure people’s general knowledge and this wealth of knowledge is very important to an individual’s journey through life, we currently know little about the links between general knowledge and brain characteristics,” he concludes. Genç.
Referencia: Erhan Genç, Christoph Fraenz, Caroline Schlüter, Patrick Friedrich, Manuel C. Voelkle, Rüdiger Hossiep, Onur Güntürkün. The Neural Architecture of General Knowledge. European Journal of Personality, 2019; DOI: 10.1002/per.2217
