Injuries From Teen Fighting Deal a Blow to IQ

New study explores connection between physical fights, cognitive decline

A new Florida State University study has found that adolescent boys who are hurt in just two physical fights suffer a loss in IQ that is roughly equivalent to missing an entire year of school. Girls experience a similar loss of IQ after only a single fighting-related injury.

The findings are significant because decreases in IQ are associated with lower educational achievement and occupational performance, mental disorders, behavioral problems and even longevity, the researchers said.

“It’s no surprise that being severely physically injured results in negative repercussions, but the extent to which such injuries affect intelligence was quite surprising,” said Joseph A. Schwartz, a doctoral student who conducted the study with Professor Kevin Beaver in FSU’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Their findings are outlined in the paper, “Serious Fighting-Related Injuries Produce a Significant Reduction in Intelligence,” which was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The study is among the first to look at the long-term effects of fighting during adolescence, a critical period of neurological development.

About 4 percent of high school students are injured as a result of a physical fight each year, the researchers said.

Schwartz and Beaver used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health collected between 1994 and 2002 to examine whether serious fighting-related injuries resulted in significant decreases in IQ over a 5- to 6-year time span. The longitudinal study began with a nationally representative sample of 20,000 middle and high school students who were tracked into adulthood through subsequent waves of data collection. At each wave of data collection, respondents were asked about a wide variety of topics, including personality traits, social relationships and the frequency of specific behaviors.

Perhaps not surprisingly, boys experienced a higher number of injuries from fighting than girls; however, the consequences for girls were more severe, a fact the researchers attributed to physiological differences that give males an increased ability to withstand physical trauma.

The researchers found that each fighting-related injury resulted in a loss of 1.62 IQ points for boys, while girls lost an average of 3.02 IQ points, even after controlling for changes in socio-economic status, age and race for both genders. Previous studies have indicated that missing a single year of school is associated with a loss of 2 to 4 IQ points.

The impact on IQ may be even greater when considering only head injuries, the researchers said. The data they studied took into account all fighting-related physical injuries.

The findings highlight the importance of schools and communities developing policies aimed at limiting injuries suffered during adolescence whether through fighting, bullying or contact sports, Schwartz said.

“We tend to focus on factors that may result in increases in intelligence over time, but examining the factors that result in decreases may be just as important,” he said. “The first step in correcting a problem is understanding its underlying causes. By knowing that fighting-related injuries result in a significant decrease in intelligence, we can begin to develop programs and protocols aimed at effective intervention.”

IQ link to baby’s weight gain in first month

New research from the University of Adelaide shows that weight gain and increased head size in the first month of a baby’s life is linked to a higher IQ at early school age.

The study was led by University of Adelaide Public Health researchers, who analysed data from more than 13,800 children who were born full-term.

The results, published today in the international journal Pediatrics, show that babies who put on 40% of their birthweight in the first four weeks had an IQ 1.5 points higher by the time they were six years of age, compared with babies who only put on 15% of their birthweight.

Those with the biggest growth in head circumference also had the highest IQs.

"Head circumference is an indicator of brain volume, so a greater increase in head circumference in a newborn baby suggests more rapid brain growth," says the lead author of the study, Dr Lisa Smithers from the University of Adelaide’s School of Population Health.

"Overall, newborn children who grew faster in the first four weeks had higher IQ scores later in life," she says.

"Those children who gained the most weight scored especially high on verbal IQ at age 6. This may be because the neural structures for verbal IQ develop earlier in life, which means the rapid weight gain during that neonatal period could be having a direct cognitive benefit for the child."

Previous studies have shown the association between early postnatal diet and IQ, but this is the first study of its kind to focus on the IQ benefits of rapid weight gain in the first month of life for healthy newborn babies.

Dr Smithers says the study further highlights the need for successful feeding of newborn babies.

"We know that many mothers have difficulty establishing breastfeeding in the first weeks of their baby’s life," Dr Smithers says.

"The findings of our study suggest that if infants are having feeding problems, there needs to be early intervention in the management of that feeding."

(Image: thebabypicz.com)

Blood Vessels in the Eye Linked With IQ, Cognitive Function

The width of blood vessels in the retina, located at the back of the eye, may indicate brain health years before the onset of dementia and other deficits, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Research shows that younger people who score low on intelligence tests, such as IQ, tend to be at higher risk for poorer health and shorter lifespan, but factors like socioeconomic status and health behaviors don’t fully account for the relationship. Psychological scientist Idan Shalev of Duke University and colleagues wondered whether intelligence might serve as a marker indicating the health of the brain, and specifically the health of the system of blood vessels that provides oxygen and nutrients to the brain.

To investigate the potential link between intelligence and brain health, the researchers borrowed a technology from a somewhat unexpected domain: ophthalmology.

Shalev and colleagues used digital retinal imaging, a relatively new and noninvasive method, to gain a window onto vascular conditions in the brain by looking at the small blood vessels of the retina, located at the back of the eye. Retinal blood vessels share similar size, structure, and function with blood vessels in the brain and can provide a way of examining brain health in living humans.

The researchers examined data from participants taking part in the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, a longitudinal investigation of health and behavior in over 1000 people born between April 1972 and March 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand.

The results were intriguing.

Having wider retinal venules was linked with lower IQ scores at age 38, even after the researchers accounted for various health, lifestyle, and environmental risk factors that might have played a role.

Individuals who had wider retinal venules showed evidence of general cognitive deficits, with lower scores on numerous measures of neurospsychological functioning, including verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and executive function.

Surprisingly, the data revealed that people who had wider venules at age 38 also had lower IQ in childhood, a full 25 years earlier.

It’s “remarkable that venular caliber in the eye is related, however modestly, to mental test scores of individuals in their 30s, and even to IQ scores in childhood,” the researchers observe.

The findings suggest that the processes linking vascular health and cognitive functioning begin much earlier than previously assumed, years before the onset of dementia and other age-related declines in brain functioning.

“Digital retinal imaging is a tool that is being used today mainly by eye doctors to study diseases of the eye,” Shalev notes. “But our initial findings indicate that it may be a useful investigative tool for psychological scientists who want to study the link between intelligence and health across the lifespan.”

The current study doesn’t address the specific mechanisms that drive the relationship between retinal vessels and cognitive functioning, but the researchers surmise that it may have to do with oxygen supply to the brain.

“Increasing knowledge about retinal vessels may enable scientists to develop better diagnosis and treatments to increase the levels of oxygen into the brain and by that, to prevent age-related worsening of cognitive abilities,” they conclude.

Motion Quotient

IQ Predicted by the Brain’s Ability to Filter Visual Motion

A brief visual task can predict IQ, according to a new study.

This surprisingly simple exercise measures the brain’s unconscious ability to filter out visual movement. The study shows that individuals whose brains are better at automatically suppressing background motion perform better on standard measures of intelligence.

The test is the first purely sensory assessment to be strongly correlated with IQ and may provide a non-verbal and culturally unbiased tool for scientists seeking to understand neural processes associated with general intelligence.

"Because intelligence is such a broad construct, you can’t really track it back to one part of the brain," says Duje Tadin, a senior author on the study and an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. "But since this task is so simple and so closely linked to IQ, it may give us clues about what makes a brain more efficient, and, consequently, more intelligent."

The unexpected link between IQ and motion filtering was reported online in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 23 by a research team lead by Tadin and Michael Melnick, a doctoral candidate in brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

In the study, individuals watched brief video clips of black and white bars moving across a computer screen. Their sole task was to identify which direction the bars drifted: to the right or to the left. The bars were presented in three sizes, with the smallest version restricted to the central circle where human motion perception is known to be optimal, an area roughly the width of the thumb when the hand is extended. Participants also took a standardized intelligence test.

As expected, people with higher IQ scores were faster at catching the movement of the bars when observing the smallest image. The results support prior research showing that individuals with higher IQs make simple perceptual judgments swifter and have faster reflexes. “Being ‘quick witted’ and ‘quick on the draw’ generally go hand in hand,” says Melnick.

But the tables turned when presented with the larger images. The higher a person’s IQ, the slower they were at detecting movement. “From previous research, we expected that all participants would be worse at detecting the movement of large images, but high IQ individuals were much, much worse,” says Melnick. That counter-intuitive inability to perceive large moving images is a perceptual marker for the brain’s ability to suppress background motion, the authors explain. In most scenarios, background movement is less important than small moving objects in the foreground. Think about driving in a car, walking down a hall, or even just moving your eyes across the room. The background is constantly in motion.

The key discovery in this study is how closely this natural filtering ability is linked to IQ. The first experiment found a 64 percent correlation between motion suppression and IQ scores, a much stronger relationship than other sensory measures to date. For example, research on the relationship between intelligence and color discrimination, sensitivity to pitch, and reaction times have found only a 20 to 40 percent correlation. “In our first experiment, the effect for motion was so strong,” recalls Tadin, “that I really thought this was a fluke.”

So the group tried to disprove the findings from the initial 12-participant study conducted while Tadin was at Vanderbilt University working with co-author Sohee Park, a professor of psychology. They reran the experiment at the University of Rochester on a new cohort of 53 subjects, administering the full IQ test instead of an abbreviated version and the results were even stronger; correlation rose to 71 percent. The authors also tested for other possible explanations for their findings.

For example, did the surprising link to IQ simply reflect a person’s willful decision to focus on small moving images? To rule out the effect of attention, the second round of experiments randomly ordered the different image sizes and tested other types of large images that have been shown not to elicit suppression. High IQ individuals continued to be quicker on all tasks, except the ones that isolated motion suppression. The authors concluded that high IQ is associated with automatic filtering of background motion.

"We know from prior research which parts of the brain are involved in visual suppression of background motion. This new link to intelligence provides a good target for looking at what is different about the neural processing, what’s different about the neurochemistry, what’s different about the neurotransmitters of people with different IQs," says Tadin.

The relationship between IQ and motion suppression points to the fundamental cognitive processes that underlie intelligence, the authors write. The brain is bombarded by an overwhelming amount of sensory information, and its efficiency is built not only on how quickly our neural networks process these signals, but also on how good they are at suppressing less meaningful information. “Rapid processing is of little utility unless it is restricted to the most relevant information,” the authors conclude.

The researchers point out that this vision test could remove some of the limitations associated with standard IQ tests, which have been criticized for cultural bias. “Because the test is simple and non-verbal, it will also help researchers better understand neural processing in individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” says co-author Loisa Bennetto, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.

IQ loss linked to Schizophrenia genes

People at greater genetic risk of schizophrenia could see a fall in IQ as they age, study shows.

Scientists at the University say IQ decline in those at risk could happen even if they do not develop schizophrenia.

The findings could lead to new research into how different genes for schizophrenia affect brain function over time. Schizophrenia - a severe mental disorder characterised by delusions and by hallucinations - is in part caused by genetic factors.

The researchers used the latest genetic analysis techniques to reach their conclusion on how thinking skills change with age.

Retaining our thinking skills as we grow older is important for living well and independently. If nature has loaded a person’s genes towards schizophrenia, then there is a slight but detectable worsening in cognitive functions between childhood and old age. -Professor Ian Deary (Director of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology)

Historical data

They compared the IQ scores of more than 1,000 people from Edinburgh.

The people were tested for general cognitive functions in 1947, aged 11, and again when they were around 70 years old.

The researchers were able to examine people’s genes and calculate each subject’s genetic likelihood of developing schizophrenia, even though none of the group had ever developed the illness.

They then compared the IQ scores of people with a high and low risk of developing schizophrenia.

Scientists found that there was no difference at age 11, but people with a greater genetic risk of schizophrenia had slightly lower IQs at age 70.

Those people who had more genes linked to schizophrenia also had a greater estimated fall in IQ over their lifetime than those at lower risk.

Cognitive impact

With further research into how these genes affect the brain, it could become possible to understand how genes linked to schizophrenia affect people’s cognitive functions as they age. -Professor Andrew McIntosh (Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences)

Schizophrenia affects around 1 per cent of the population, often in the teenage or early adult years, and is associated with problems in mental ability and memory.

The study, which was funded by the BBSRC, Age UK, and the Chief Scientist Office, is published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Western University-led research debunks the IQ myth

After conducting the largest online intelligence study on record, a Western University-led research team has concluded that the notion of measuring one’s intelligence quotient or IQ by a singular, standardized test is highly misleading.

The findings from the landmark study, which included more than 100,000 participants, were published in the journal Neuron.

Utilizing an online study open to anyone, anywhere in the world, the researchers asked respondents to complete 12 cognitive tests tapping memory, reasoning, attention and planning abilities, as well as a survey about their background and lifestyle habits.

"The uptake was astonishing," says Owen, the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging and senior investigator on the project. "We expected a few hundred responses, but thousands and thousands of people took part, including people of all ages, cultures and creeds from every corner of the world."

The results showed that when a wide range of cognitive abilities are explored, the observed variations in performance can only be explained with at least three distinct components: short-term memory, reasoning and a verbal component.

No one component, or IQ, explained everything. Furthermore, the scientists used a brain scanning technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to show that these differences in cognitive ability map onto distinct circuits in the brain.

With so many respondents, the results also provided a wealth of new information about how factors such as age, gender and the tendency to play computer games influence our brain function.

"Regular brain training didn’t help people’s cognitive performance at all yet aging had a profound negative effect on both memory and reasoning abilities," says Owen.

Hampshire adds, “Intriguingly, people who regularly played computer games did perform significantly better in terms of both reasoning and short-term memory. And smokers performed poorly on the short-term memory and the verbal factors, while people who frequently suffer from anxiety performed badly on the short-term memory factor in particular”.

To continue the groundbreaking research, the team has launched a new version of the tests at http://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/theIQchallenge

"To ensure the results aren’t biased, we can’t say much about the agenda other than that there are many more fascinating questions about variations in cognitive ability that we want to answer," explains Hampshire.

(Image by Lasse Kristensen/Shutterstock)

A 12-year-old schoolgirl has been accepted into Mensa after discovering she is brainier than both Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking.

Olivia Manning, from Liverpool, managed to get a whopping score in an IQ test of 162 - well above the 100 average.

Her score is not only two points better than genius German physicist Einstein and Professor Stephen Hawking, but puts her in the top one per cent of intelligent people in the world.

(Other sources: Liverpool Daily Post)