Midsagittal brain shape correlation with intelligence and cognitive performance

Sex differences in brain volume are related to specific skills, not to general intelligence

“…Informed consent was obtained. We have previously reported other brain/intelligence results using this sample (Bruner, Martín-Loeches, Burgaleta, & Colom, 2011;Colom et al, 2009).…”

Cortical surface area and cortical thickness in the precuneus of adult humans

“…Finally, we tested whether precuneal morphological variation is correlated with a set of psychometric scores tapping cognitive functions of increased complexity, namely processing speed, attention control, working memory, and intelligence. We have previously published analyses of correlation between brain geometry and standard cognitive variables (Bruner et al, 2011b;Martin-Loeches et al, 2013). Generally, most cognitive factors do not display patent associations with brain form, although some of them (attention control and processing speed, in particular) may show weak but consistent relationships with shape changes.…”

Endocasts: Possibilities and Limitations for the Interpretation of Human Brain Evolution

“…While it has been proposed that our species' globular brain shape is related to increased wiring efficiency [Hofman, 1989;Chklovskii and Stevens, 2000;Chklovskii et al, 2002], Bruner et al [2011] found only subtle correlations between midsagittal brain shape and performance in a series of different cognitive tests among human young adults. Brain shape per se is probably even less correlated to any measure of intelligence than brain size [Gunz et al, 2012;Neubauer and Hublin, 2012] but internal brain organization, such as neural pathways and cytoarchitecture, is interpreted to be very important [Schoenemann et al, 2000;Schmithorst et al, 2005;Shaw et al, 2006;Luders et al, 2009;van Leeuwen et al, 2009].…”

“…Only recently, geometric morphometric techniques have been used to quantify and analyze global brain shape itself [Bruner et al, 2010[Bruner et al, , 2011Gomez-Robles et al, 2013], but also Euclidean distance matrix analysis, which analyzes interlandmark distances, has been used [Richtsmeier et al, 2006;Aldridge, 2011]. MRI scans are used to obtain coordinate data of landmarks defined on specific brain sulci and structures, and thereby the dimensions and shape of different brain regions can be delineated and quantified.…”