The Neuroscience of Intelligence

What I understand of the studies contained in this book, The more stress the brain puts into working and solving problems, the lower the found IQ from IQ pattern recognition tests. I would hazard a guess that this would mean that someone with low IQ would rely on less stable methods of success and natural talent rather than statistical evidence and pattern recognition. An extra bonus to this books is it goes over common statistics frauds that base evidence on cherry picked data from Harvard like schools where their general demographic will be a certain IQ rather than from wider pools where IQ divergence is more common and average IQ is easier to assert. As a private educator, I would say the evidence presented in this strengthens the case AGAINST large schools and FOR smaller schools such as the original school house that would have about 20 sts in total. Furthermore students with low IQ benefit from simple exercises to strengthen their overall compiling of complex tasks. Meaning that they would be far behind other students. This means that high IQ people and low IQ talented people will approach difficulties in different ways. I could go into much greater detail on the applications of the evidence presented here. I really enjoyed the historical analysis of brain scans to modern day scanning which really is cutting edge and shows how Neuroscience is a constantly evolving science. No doubt in 10 years we may have even more cutting edge tools to fully understand the brain.

Intelligence research is controversial. Anyone who has followed the field knows it, and the author of this book certainly doesn't hide it. Instead, he acknowledges that the field is complicated but presents an overview of the current state of the research, pointing out where the evidence is conclusive, where it's questionable, and where it's non-existent. After decades of work, many questions remain, but the combination of psychometric, genetic, and brain imaging studies has shed considerable light on the structure of human intelligence. This book doesn't go into great detail on all of these subjects but provides a moderately-deep survey of the neuroscience research on the topic. I've long complained that one of the biggest problems in scientific writing is that the "actual" scientific writing (peer-reviewed journal articles) has become so dependent on advanced training that even professional scientists from slightly different disciplines struggle to make heads or tails of its content (thus hampering interdisciplinary collaboration) while even intelligent lay audiences stand no chance at all (thus hampering public understanding of cutting-edge science). Meanwhile, much of the "popular" scientific writing is produced by journalists who either don't understand their subjects or dumb them down to the point of inaccuracy. This book seems to find a near-perfect compromise and I would dearly love to see much more work in its genre. The ideal audience for this book seems to be the student of either psychology or neuroscience with an interest in intelligence research. The author makes no apologies for inclusion of a fair amount of semi-technical information, but also gently introduces the reader to many of these topics, making the work accessible to as broad an audience as is possible for such a work. By the time you finish reading, you'll come away with a bird's eye view of the current state of neuroscience research on intelligence, some interesting questions for future research, and a sense of the field's development through history. Nothing as complicated as the human brain can be thoroughly examined in only 200-some pages, but the reader will gain a more-than-passable understanding for non-professionals and a well-documented road map to further reading for students or professionals in the field. Not only is this a work of academic interest, it's also quite practical. Political discussions regarding education policy are ubiquitous and often, in the authors own words, rancorous. Though the author does make a couple of political observations (some of which I agree with and some of which I don't) in the final couple of pages, this book isn't a text on education policy. It does, however, provide the requisite scientific background necessary for a productive discussion of education policy. If we want to make people smarter, we need first to understand the biological reasons why some people are already smarter than others. It's an open question, but this book helps to point us in the right direction. Highly recommended.

Lo pedí porque se lo recomendaron en la Facultad a mi hija. Estudia Criminología

Prof Haier takes you from knowing nothing to getting a full overview of the neuroimaging side of intelligence, with a few tidbits on the neurochemical basis as well.

Dieses Buch ist eine verständlich geschriebene Einführung in die (Neuro-)Wissenschaft von der menschlichen Intelligenz. Der Autor versteht es ehrlich und so unvoreingenommen wie möglich zu sein und dennoch Faszination, gar Begeisterung, für sein Fachgebiet zu wecken. Einige wichtige Erkenntnisse im Buch sind: • Die Ergebnisse von kognitiven Tests korrelieren stark miteinander. Das spricht für die Existenz einer allgemeinen Intelligenz, des g-Faktors • IQ-Test-Ergebnisse korrelieren stark mit Bildungs- und Berufserfolg. Das belegt ihre große (wenn auch nicht unbegrenzte) Aussagekraft. • Intelligenz wird sowohl durch die Umwelt/Erziehung (nurture) als auch durch die Genetik (nature) bestimmt. Dabei überwiegt allerdings die genetische Komponente. Dabei dominiert sie bei Erwachsenen und älteren Jugendlichen mehr als bei Kindern. • IQ-Testergebnisse korrelieren stark mit genetischen und neurobiologischen Unterschieden, was ihre Brauchbarkeit zusätzlich untermauert. • Bisherige Versuche Intelligenz durch Training zu erhöhen sind gescheitert. Dennoch ist Haier optimistisch, dass es in der Zukunft gelingen wird die menschliche Intelligenz mit technologischen Mitteln zu steigern. Wenn wir einmal die der menschlichen Intelligenz zugrundeliegenden biologischen Mechanismen ausreichend verstanden haben, wird es uns wahrscheinlich gelingen Wege zu finden sie zu steigern. Da Intelligenz hauptsächlich genetisch geprägt wird und sie den Schul- Hochschul- und Berufserfolg entscheidend beeinflusst, sind viele Menschen im Leben mehr oder weniger benachteiligt für etwas, das jenseits ihrer Kontrolle liegt. Intelligenzsteigernde Technologien könnten solchen Menschen eine zweite Chance geben.