Abstract
Intelligence is a fundamental ability that sets humans apart from other animal species. Despite its importance in defining human behaviour, the neural networks responsible for intelligence are not well understood. The dominant view from neuroimaging work suggests that intelligent performance on a range of tasks is underpinned by segregated interactions in a fronto-parietal network of brain regions. Here we asked whether fronto-parietal interactions associated with intelligence are ubiquitous, or emerge from more widespread associations in a task-free context. First we undertook an exploratory mapping of the existing literature on functional connectivity associated with intelligence. Next, to empirically test hypotheses derived from the exploratory mapping, we performed network analyses in a cohort of 317 unrelated participants from the Human Connectome Project. Our results revealed a novel contribution of across-network interactions between default-mode and fronto-parietal networks to individual differences in intelligence at rest. Specifically, we found that greater connectivity in the resting state was associated with higher intelligence scores. Our findings highlight the need to broaden the dominant fronto-parietal conceptualisation of intelligence to encompass more complex and context-specific network dynamics.
Highlights
Six seed regions defined by prior VHMC analysis individual differences in intelligence have been related to changes in resting state connectivity in neural networks broadly involved in self-referential mental activity, attentional control processes and task-set maintenance[12,20,21,22,23,24]
We assessed whether the dominant parieto-frontal integration theory of intelligence (P-FIT)[9] can be extended to networks supporting intelligence in task-free contexts by conducting a functional connectivity analysis of Human Connectome Project data
We tested whether resting state functional connectivity within frontal and parietal brain regions, and between these regions and the rest of the brain, can account for individual variability in intelligence scores
Summary
Individual differences in intelligence have been related to changes in resting state connectivity in neural networks broadly involved in self-referential mental activity (default-mode network), attentional control processes (dorsal attention network) and task-set maintenance (cingulo-opercular network)[12,20,21,22,23,24]. We started by conducting an exploratory mapping of previous findings from studies that had investigated the relationship between resting state functional connectivity and measures of intelligence. We found that the previously reported functional connections associated with intelligence were not restricted to the fronto-parietal system (Fig. 1). We tested this qualitative observation by mapping brain-intelligence relationships using a large and independent set of neuroimaging and behavioural data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP)[15]. According to a context-invariant interpretation of the P-FIT10, intelligence should be related to connectivity within a fronto-parietal network as assessed during task performance and in the resting state. Absence of overlap between task and resting state networks would be more consistent with a context-specific neurophysiological model of intelligence
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