Intelligent brains take longer to solve difficult problems, shows simulation study

Originally published by Stefanie Seltmann, Berlin Institute of Health in der Charité (BIH), on June 1, 2023

Credit: BIH/Petra Ritter

Do intelligent people think faster? Researchers at the BIH and Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, together with a colleague from Barcelona, made the surprising finding that participants with higher intelligence scores were only quicker when tackling simple tasks, while they took longer to solve difficult problems than subjects with lower IQ scores.

In personalized brain simulations of the 650 participants, the researchers could determine that brains with reduced synchrony between brain areas literally "jump to conclusions" when making decisions, rather than waiting until upstream brain regions could complete the processing steps needed to solve the problem.

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