Inverse relationship between nonverbal intelligence and the parameters of pattern reversal visual evoked potentials in left-handed male subjects: importance of right brain and testosterone.

Abstract

The relationships between latencies of visual evoked potentials (VEPs) and nonverbal intelligence test scores (IQs from Cattell's Culture Fair Intelligence Test) and correlations between serum testosterone level and VEP latencies were studied to examine the neural speed hypothesis of intelligence and its hormonal mechanisms in left-handed male subjects (Geschwind Scores). In accordance with the speed theory of intelligence, N1 and P1 latencies (and amplitudes) were found to be inversely related to IQ. However, this was true only for the right brain; the left brain did not contribute to this relationship. There was an inverse relationship between serum testosterone level and P1 latency; left minus right N1 latency, depending on N1 latency from right brain, linearly increased with testosterone. It was concluded that nonverbal intelligence largely depends on speed of information processing only by the right brain, not by the left brain in left-handed male subjects. This may have been created by testosterone in these subjects. Inconsistencies in the IQ literature concerning the speed hypothesis of intelligence may be explained by differences in cerebral lateralization.