Abstract
Recent advances of neuroimaging methodology and artificial intelligence have resulted in renewed interest in board games like chess and Baduk (called Go game in the West) and have provided clues as to the mechanisms behind the games. However, an interesting question that remains to be answered is whether the board game expertise as one of cognitive skills goes beyond just being good at the trained game and how it maps on networks associated with cognitive abilities that are not directly trained. To address this issue, we examined functional activity and connectivity in Baduk experts, compared to novices, while performing a visual n-back working memory (WM) task. We found that experts, compared to novices, had greater activation in superior parietal cortex during face WM, though there were no group differences in behavioral performances. Using a data-driven, whole-brain multivariate approach, we also found significant group differences in the multivariate pattern of connectivity in frontal pole and inferior parietal cortex, further showing greater connectivity between frontal and parietal regions and between frontal and temporal regions in experts. Our findings suggest that long-term trained Baduk experts have the reorganization of functional interactions between brain regions even for untrained cognitive ability.
Highlights
People have very different levels of cognitive ability, from profound impairments to superior skills
Researchers have explicitly investigated neural correlates of specific cognitive components closely related to board game by using a variety of domainspecific tasks employing the board game-related stimuli; these studies have revealed brain regions associated with object and pattern recognition on the board, such as the occipitotemporal junction, fusiform gyrus (FFA), and collateral sulcus (Bilalicet al., 2010, 2011), with intuitive best next-move generation on the board, such as the caudate nucleus (Wan et al, 2011, 2012), and with intuitive strategy decision making on the board, such as different parts of the cingulate cortex (Wan et al, 2015)
To address the question as to whether board game experts (BEs), individuals having cognitive expertise including the highest level of domain-specific pattern recognition, differ from novices in untrained cognitive functions in terms of behavioral performance and brain function, here we explored the brain function of the Baduk experts while performing n-back working memory (WM) tasks
Summary
People have very different levels of cognitive ability, from profound impairments to superior skills. Researchers have explicitly investigated neural correlates of specific cognitive components closely related to board game by using a variety of domainspecific tasks employing the board game-related stimuli; these studies have revealed brain regions associated with object and pattern recognition on the board, such as the occipitotemporal junction, fusiform gyrus (FFA), and collateral sulcus (Bilalicet al., 2010, 2011), with intuitive best next-move generation on the board, such as the caudate nucleus (Wan et al, 2011, 2012), and with intuitive strategy decision making on the board, such as different parts of the cingulate cortex (Wan et al, 2015). The meta-analysis on the studies with visual stimulation showed that experts had enhanced activation in inferior parietal cortex and lingual gyrus
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