According to a recent study, high-IQ individuals have an efficient brain. While they may appear impaired on certain tasks, the brain is actually focusing only on relevant information.

The study uses black and white bars moving on the screen as the motions that participants may or may not see.  For individuals that have a higher IQ, there appeared to be impairment in seeing motions.  The study instructed participants to identify moving lines.  There were also larger movements occurring, but the researchers did not explicitly instruct participants to look for it.  Higher-IQ individuals took more frames to see that movement. However, they were not instructed that the large movements were important, only the small movements.

The researchers argue that this demonstrates a difference in the processing of a high-IQ individual’s brain as compared with the brain of someone with a lower or an average IQ.  The high-IQ brain does not necessarily have a higher capacity for processing.  Rather, the researchers assert that the high-IQ brain is better adapted for processing relevant information and ignoring other details.  They also contend that, had participants been instructed to look for the bigger movements, the high-IQ individuals would have performed better on that task.

This new link to intelligence provides a good target for looking at what is different about the neural processing, what’s different about the neurochemistry, what’s different about the neurotransmitters of people with different IQs,” says senior author Duje Tadin, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

Earlier research discussed in Psychology Today found that more intelligent people use less of their brains.  While a larger brain is associated with greater intelligence across species, the same does not hold true within the same species.  Researchers measured brain activity and found that individuals of higher intelligence showed less brain activity performing the same tasks.  The high-intelligence brain processes the same information more efficiently.  Based on the recent work, these participants may have been showing less brain activity because they are only processing relevant information.

Visual information and processing has long been utilized as part of intelligence testing. As early as infancy, tests such as the Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence measure visual processing and recall of information as a predictor of later intelligence levels.

While these studies are generally well-reputed, they may be misguided in light of the recent work.  Processing of visual information may be linked to a perception of what is and is not important at a given time.  Depending on the task presented or perceived by the individual, there may appear to be an impairment in visual processing.  However, it may just be the intelligent person reserving brain power for the important things.