Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Verbal and non-verbal intelligence changes in the teenage brain

Nature volume 479, pages 113–116 (2011)Cite this article

Subjects

An Addendum to this article was published on 16 May 2012

Abstract

Intelligence quotient (IQ) is a standardized measure of human intellectual capacity that takes into account a wide range of cognitive skills1. IQ is generally considered to be stable across the lifespan, with scores at one time point used to predict educational achievement and employment prospects in later years1. Neuroimaging allows us to test whether unexpected longitudinal fluctuations in measured IQ are related to brain development. Here we show that verbal and non-verbal IQ can rise or fall in the teenage years, with these changes in performance validated by their close correlation with changes in local brain structure. A combination of structural and functional imaging showed that verbal IQ changed with grey matter in a region that was activated by speech, whereas non-verbal IQ changed with grey matter in a region that was activated by finger movements. By using longitudinal assessments of the same individuals, we obviated the many sources of variation in brain structure that confound cross-sectional studies. This allowed us to dissociate neural markers for the two types of IQ and to show that general verbal and non-verbal abilities are closely linked to the sensorimotor skills involved in learning. More generally, our results emphasize the possibility that an individual’s intellectual capacity relative to their peers can decrease or increase in the teenage years. This would be encouraging to those whose intellectual potential may improve, and would be a warning that early achievers may not maintain their potential.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Location of brain regions where grey matter changed with VIQ and PIQ.
Figure 2: Functional activations in the regions identified by the structural analysis.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. McCall, R. B. Childhood IQs as predictors of adult educational and occupational status. Science 197, 482–483 (1977)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Deary, I. J., Whalley, L. J., Lemmon, H., Crawford, J. R. & Starr, J. M. The stability of differences in mental ability from childhood to old age: follow-up of the 1932 Scottish Mental Survey. Intelligence 28, 49–55 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Wilke, M., Sohn, J.-H., Byars, A. W. & Holland, S. K. Bright spots: correlations of gray matter volume with IQ in a normal pediatric population. Neuroimage 20, 202–215 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Gong, Q.-Y. et al. Voxel-based morphometry and stereology provide convergent evidence of the importance of medial prefrontal cortex for fluid intelligence in healthy adults. Neuroimage 25, 1175–1186 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Camara, W. J., Nathan, J. S. & Puente, A. E. Psychological test usage: implications in professional psychology. Prof. Psychol. Res. Pr. 31, 141–154 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Kaufman, A. & Lichtenberger, E. O. Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence 209–216 (Wiley, 2006)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Haier, R. J., Jung, R. E., Yeo, R. A., Head, K. & Alkire, M. T. Structural brain variation and general intelligence. Neuroimage 23, 425–433 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Colom, R., Karama, S., Jung, R. E. & Haier, R. J. Human intelligence and brain networks. Dialogues Clin. Neurosci. 12, 489–501 (2010)

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  9. Shaw, P. et al. Intellectual ability and cortical development in children and adolescents. Nature 440, 676–679 (2006)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Huang, J., Carr, T. H. & Cao, Y. Comparing cortical activations for silent and overt speech using event-related fMRI. Hum. Brain Mapp. 15, 39–53 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Nitschke, M. F., Kleinschmidt, A., Wessel, K. & Frahm, J. Somatotopic motor representation in the human anterior cerebellum: a high-resolution functional MRI study. Brain 119, 1023–1029 (1996)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Stoodley, C. J., Valerad, E. M. & Schmahmann, J. D. An fMRI study of intra-individual functional topography in the human cerebellum. Behav. Neurol. 23, 65–79 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Diamond, A. Close interrelation of motor development and cognitive development and of the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex. Child Dev. 71, 44–56 (2000)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Pangelinan, M. M. et al. Beyond age and gender: relationships between cortical and subcortical brain volume and cognitive-motor abilities in school-age children. Neuroimage 54, 3093–3100 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Davis, A. S., Pass, L. A., Finch, W. H., Dean, R. S. & Woodcock, R. W. The canonical relationship between sensory-motor functioning and cognitive processing in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Arch. Clin. Neuropsychol. 24, 273–286 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Davis, E. E., Pitchford, N. J., Jaspan, T., McArthur, D. & Walker, D. Development of cognitive and motor function following cerebellar tumour injury sustained in early childhood. Cortex 46, 919–932 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Rosenbaum, D. A., Carlson, R. A. & Gilmore, R. O. Acquisition of intellectual and perceptual-motor skills. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 52, 453–470 (2001)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Wassenberg, R. et al. Relation between cognitive and motor performance in 5- to 6-year-old children: results from a large-scale cross-sectional study. Child Dev. 76, 1092–1103 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Jung, R. E. & Haier, R. J. The parieto-frontal integration theory (P-FIT) of intelligence: converging neuroimaging evidence. Behav. Brain Sci. 30, 135–154 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Eckert, M. A. et al. To modulate or not to modulate: differing results in uniquely shaped Williams syndrome brains. Neuroimage 32, 1001–1007 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Lee, H. et al. Anatomical traces of vocabulary acquisition in the adolescent brain. J. Neurosci. 27, 1184–1189 (2007)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Richardson, F. M., Thomas, M. S., Filippi, R., Harth, H. & Price, C. J. Contrasting effects of vocabulary knowledge on temporal and parietal brain structure across lifespan. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 22, 943–954 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Seghier, M. L., Fagan, E. & Price, C. J. Functional subdivisions in the left angular gyrus where the semantic system meets and diverges from the default network. J. Neurosci. 30, 16809–16817 (2010)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Seghier, M. L. & Price, C. J. Dissociating functional brain networks by decoding the between-subject variability. Neuroimage 45, 349–359 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Parker Jones ‘O¯. et al. Where, when and why brain activation differs for bilinguals and monolinguals during picture naming and reading aloud. Cereb. Cortex advance online publication, 〈http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhr161〉 (24 June 2011)

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust. We thank J. Glensman, A. Brennan, A. Peters, L. Stewart, K. Pitcher and R. Rutherford for their help with data collection; and W. Penny for his advice on statistical analyses.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, London WC1N 3BG, UK

    Sue Ramsden, Fiona M. Richardson, Goulven Josse, Caroline Ellis, Clare Shakeshaft, Mohamed L. Seghier & Cathy J. Price

  2. Department of Psychological Sciences, Developmental Neurocognition Laboratory, Birkbeck College, University of London, London WC1E 7HX, UK

    Michael S. C. Thomas

Authors
  1. Sue Ramsden
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Fiona M. Richardson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Goulven Josse
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Michael S. C. Thomas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Caroline Ellis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Clare Shakeshaft
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Mohamed L. Seghier
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Cathy J. Price
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

C.J.P. designed and supervised the study. C.J.P. and C.S. recruited the participants. C.S., S.R. and G.J. collected the data. F.M.R., S.R., C.E., M.L.S. and C.J.P. analysed the data. S.R., M.S.C.T. and C.J.P. wrote the manuscript and all authors edited the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cathy J. Price.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains Supplementary Text, additional references, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Figure 1 with a legend. (PDF 431 kb)

PowerPoint slides

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ramsden, S., Richardson, F., Josse, G. et al. Verbal and non-verbal intelligence changes in the teenage brain. Nature 479, 113–116 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10514

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10514

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing