Can you really photograph intelligence how to photograph a flower, a tree, a face? Probably yes, with what doctors call functional magnetic resonance imaging for example, which can be in three dimensions capable of creating a map, a bit like a geographical paper of our brain. And functional magnetic resonance imaging is not limited to photographing, it even manages to identify the activities of the different areas of the cerebral cortex with all their heterogeneity; And the measure of the state of disorder of the brain (like any other physical system including the universe) physicists call it entropy.
Entropy in our case depends on the flow in the blood vessels of the brain but also on the metabolism and the consumption of oxygen. Apart from trauma, high and low entropy areas configure conditions of damage, a bleeding for example, or a heart attack, or a tumor. In recent years, however, we would like to use these techniques to discover emotions, and even the nature of certain behaviors.
What happens in the brain of those who witness a concert or those who abandon themselves to the pleasure of good cuisine or live the joy of an evening of love? It happens that more blood arrives in certain areas of the brain, dopamine is released – substance that guarantees communications between cell and cell – but also brain, endorphins and other hormones.
Research
So why not use functional magnetic resonance imaging to study intelligence? Yes, you read well, intelligence. A job just published in Plos One shows that with functional magnetic resonance imaging it is possible to correlate areas of greater entropy with the two most used intelligence tests, the “Shepley Vocabulary” which has to do above all with the talking and the “Wasi Matrix Reasoning” which measures the ability to solve problems.
They did it in 892 Americans and they realized that the relationship between entropy and intelligence is above all borne by the prefrontal cortex, the lower temporal lobes and the cerebellum. Where there is entropy the brain is more active, dynamic, versatile and capable of processing a large number of information, none of this happens where there is low entropy.
An intelligent brain must be able to connect a lot of information and know how to do it quickly, also because in the brain, of neurons, there are 100 billion (just how many are the stars of the Milky Way).
These neurons do not all activate themselves at the same time – it would be a disaster if not – but which and how many are activated when we read, we try to remember, recognize a voice, solve a new problem? And what and how many neurons connect to each other in these circumstances and in others of the genre? We do not yet know it, and in this the work of Plos One does not help us, but opens a new road admitted that it is really possible one day to bind the signals that come from the magnetic resonance neuroimmagini to the degree of intelligence of men.
Many other studies will be needed, for now we are really at the beginning, because the correlation between entropy of the brain and an intelligence quotient for what emerges from the data of Plos One is rather weak.
And then what is intelligence? And what intelligence are we talking about? The logical-mathematical or cinematographic-musical or pragmatic-mechanical one? And there are others, up to 120. In short, they are very complex problems, neuroimmagini help but there is something else, and it will be necessary to integrate the functional magnetic resonance imaging with the many genes associated with intelligence and the influence of the environment.
The prospects
The work of Plos One, with all its limits, however opens prospects of great interest. Let’s imagine that in the future the signs of functional magnetic resonance imaging can be used to diagnose depression, post-traumatic stress disorders and also autism or schizophrenia, it would be a big step forward, especially the day that we will have effective drugs.
For what you know now, the degree of entropy according to New York researchers correlates (perhaps) with intelligence tests, especially as regards the activity of the frontal region of the brain where there are areas that make us capable of planning our activities and controlling emotions.
For now, intelligence we can photograph it, who knows that tomorrow with genetic engineering interventions (gene editing for example but we will have to find genes) it is not even possible to increase it. If we were capable of it, and if it were safe, would it be right to do it? I don’t know, they are things that exist from the competence of science, it is a matter for philosophers and civil society will have to involve and those who legislate.
