Professor Frederic Ullen of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and Guy Madison of Sweden's Umea University said they submitted 34 right-handed men between ages 19 and 49 to a test of rhythm involving tapping a drumstick at several different intervals and then gave the men a 60-question psychometric test, The Daily Telegraph reported Thursday.

"The rhythmic accuracy in brain activity that is observed when a person maintains a steady beat is also important to the problem-solving capacities measured with the intelligence tests," Ullen said.

"We found that people with high general intelligence were also more stable on a very simple timing task," he said. "We also found that these participants had larger volumes of the white matter in the brain, which contains connections between brain regions."