See on Scoop.it - Knowmads, Infocology of the future
When people with very high IQs are given moderately difficult task, their brains work more efficiently compared to people with slightly above-average IQs.
To describe the effect, Elsbeth Stern, a professor at ETH Zurich, uses the analogy of a more and less efficient car: “When both cars are traveling slowly, neither car consumes very much fuel. If the efficient car travels at maximum speed, it also consumes a lot of fuel. At moderate speeds, however, the differences in fuel consumption become significant.”
Scientists refer to this as the neural efficiency hypothesis—although most experts accept it as an undisputed fact.
While working on her doctoral thesis in Stern’s work group, Daniela Nussbaumer found evidence of this effect in a group of people possessing above-average intelligence for tasks involving what is referred to as working memory.
“We measured the electrical activity in the brains of university students, enabling us to identify differences in brain activity between people with slightly above-average and considerably above-average IQs,” says Nussbaumer.
Past studies of neural efficiency have generally used groups of people with extreme variations in intelligence.
See on futurity.org
from Stowe Boyd http://stoweboyd.com/post/125515769607
