WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) -- The differences in brain development among children appear to be linked to intelligence, a U.S. National Institute of Mental Health study says.
The study, first of its kind and published Thursday in the journal Nature, focuses on a relationship between the physical characteristics of the brain and intelligence and how differently the brightest children develop from those not as bright, The Washington Post said.
Brain scans on 309 healthy children between the ages of 6 and 19, done by researchers at NIMH, showed that children with the highest IQs began with a relatively thin cortex -- the folded outer layer of the brain involved in complex thinking -- which quickly grew thicker to a peak at age 11 or 12, much later than in less-gifted children, then rapidly thinned down.
Philip Shaw, the lead investigator, said children of average intelligence had a thicker cortex around age 6, but by 13 it was thinner than children of superior intelligence.
