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1.6 Geake - The Neurobiology of Giftedness
1.6 Geake - The Neurobiology of Giftedness
John G. Geake
United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
Gifted children learn more rapidly and efficiently than others, presumably due to
Set tasks with high working memory demands, e.g. tasks with multiple
components;
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Employ subject specialist mentors, e.g. retired professionals;
INTRODUCTION
In the early 21st Century, nearly a decade after The Decade of the Brain, when brain-
based explanations of human cognitive characteristics are expected, (if not always
Within a diverse literature, there are plenty of cognitive behaviours which characterise
giftedness for which we can seek neural level descriptions. Among such
characteristics, the following (at least) enjoy general acceptance (Geake, 2007a).
Benbow & Alexander, 1995; OBoyle, 2000; Singh & OBoyle, 2004),
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paradoxically, being slower at lower-level classroom answers, presumably
due to interpreting the question at a higher level than was intended, and
connections with relative ease (Kanevsky & Geake, 2005; Geake &
As interesting as the question might be, it is not the purpose of this review to consider
conjectured fine lines between genius and madness, or to contrast the neuro-
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progress). Rather, this review will note some neuroscientific evidence for the neural
bases of the five typically gifted cognitive behaviours listed above. For a more
DEVELOPMENT
Above-age testing has been one successful approach to more accurately assess the
standardised tests are at or near ceiling (Gross, 2004). The assumption behind above-
age testing is that gifted children are more similar (at least cognitively), to older
gifted adolescents from the Iowa Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (CY-
TAG) with 30 age-matched peers and 30 college students, Alexander, OBoyle and
Benbow (1996) found that, while there were differences in alpha band power over the
there were no differences in alpha power at the frontal and occipital lobe
locations between gifted adolescents and college age subjects suggesting that
the two groups have a similar level of brain maturation for these regions. (p.
30)
In other words, the frontal lobes of the young gifted subjects seemed to be operating
with the equivalent maturity of students some five years older already in university.
This interpretation raises a question: To what extent is such cognitive precocity the
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outcome of precocious neural development, i.e., are the brains of gifted children
structurally more like the brains of older children than those of same-age peers?
resonance imaging (MRI) study of intellectual ability and cortical development in 300
children and adolescents (Shaw et al, 2006). (MRI data consists of structural images
of brain tissue white and grey matter). Here, these data showed that the trajectory of
change in the thickness of the cerebral cortex (the outer layer of grey matter most
implicated in intellectual functioning), rather than cortical thickness per se, was most
closely related to the childrens levels of intelligence. In particular, the cortices of the
high-IQ group were thinner when these children were young, but grew so rapidly that
by the time the gifted children were adolescents, their cerebral cortices were
significantly thicker than average, especially the prefrontal cortex. In sum, the
the remit of their study), such as genetic endowment on the one hand, and socio-
economic and educational environments on the other. To this end, over a decade
earlier, OBoyle and Benbow (1990) speculated that one source of such precocious
CHARACTERISTICS
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evaluation and updating (Baddeley & Sala, 1998), data from a range of neuroimaging
Koechlin et al., 1999;; Christoff et al., 2001; Parsons & Osherson, 2001; Strange et
Evidence to address the first question comes from a Positron Emission Tomography
which neural activations in response to high g-loaded (i.e., difficult) IQ test items
were contrasted with activations in response to low g-loaded (i.e., easier) IQ test items
(Duncan et al., 2001). Thinking about difficult IQ test items, whether spatial or
verbal, involved the bilateral PFC. Consistent results were found by Lee et al. (2006)
changes in neural vasculature, the BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) response)
which compared gifted and age-matched adolescents on high-g and low-g loaded IQ
test items; in the gifted group, high g-loaded tasks increased activity in bilateral PFC
regions. And in a series of fMRI studies of fluid analogising (described more fully
below), Geake and Hansen found positive linear correlations between BOLD changes
Reading Test, NART) in the left lateral PFC (Geake & Hansen, 2005), and with
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Evidence with which to address the second question about IQ correlates with
(uses MRI data to measure quantitative individual differences in grey and white
matter) of brain cell density in which most of the 6% of grey matter volumes
distributed throughout the brain which correlated with IQ were found in the PFC
In sum, gifted individuals have relatively enhanced structural, and hence functional,
neurobiology in the PFC regions responsible for cognitive control, and working
memory.
PROCESSING
The foregoing focus on the PFC, however, does not imply that the frontal cortex is the
supported by a fronto-parietal network (Gray, Chabris & Braver, 2003; Gray &
Thompson, 2004). The reason is that the cognitive control afforded by frontal
functioning requires persistent activation of relevant inputs from other brain areas to
The extent to which such neural support is more extensive and focussed for gifted
network by gifted individuals model is provided by two studies. Zhang et al. (2006),
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in an ERP study of the information processing involved during a visual search task
with gifted and average school children in China, explained their results by suggesting
that the gifted children had better spatially and temporally coordinated neural
networks. And Lee et al. (2006) in an fMRI study in Korea found that gifted primary
and secondary school children displayed stronger activations in their posterior parietal
These results suggest that superior-g may not be due to the recruitment of
adolescents engaged in mental rotation also showed bilateral activation of the parietal
the parietal lobes,[and] frontal cortex ... are critical parts of an all-purpose
Moreover, it has been more recently suggested that the cerebellum plays an important
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rehearsal role in information processing; consequently, heightened cerebellar
Liu, 2007).
task adaptation and selectivity (described more fully below) (Geake & Dobson, 2005).
end, musical prodigies provide an informative group of gifted and talented children to
Geake (1996) found that cognitive control processing was most important for
directed attention, that contributes most towards their remarkable abilities. (p.
41)
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The point of measuring musical coherence as a critical aspect of musical information
processing was that making sense of music requires a top-down perspective: what is
being heard in the present instant must be compared with what was heard just prior,
and what was heard before that, and so on over longer time periods back to the
temporal organisation of the music, can assist musical information processing (Geake
& Gregson, 1999), it was individual differences in their predilection for making top-
down musical sense through processing musical coherence, aided by their enhanced
working memory capacities for processing such musical information (Geake, 1999),
the standard repertoire, and engage in hours of highly motivated and efficient practice
(Geake, 1996).
The quest for top down understanding is also evident among young mathematically
mathematical pattern problems, Kanevsky and Geake (2005) found that the gifted
children sought top-down, meta-level hints and suggestions from their teacher rather
than item-specific suggestions which were preferred by their peers. And similarly to
Geakes musical prodigies, the mathematically gifted children here also had higher
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The neurobiological characteristics of giftedness which support high levels of
executive functioning and working memory, viz., efficacious PFC functioning, and
individuals through:
a finely tuned capacity for activating (or inhibiting) the very brain regions
known to play (not play) specialized roles in the performance of a given task.
... That is, precocious individuals are especially facile at knowing [sic] what
steps to take in solving a given intellectual problem. (Baddeley & Sala, 1998,
p. 438)
In other words, efficacious executive cognitive control involves attentional focus and
creative intelligence (Geake & Dobson, 2005). This model of creative intelligence
features fluid analogising, analogies with several plausible but no necessary correct
processing occurs in the brain. Fluid analogising enables the generation of candidate
relationships between new information and selected items from long-term memory
store. Consequently, it has been argued (in much greater detail than is possible here)
that a keen facility for fluid analogising is a cognitive hallmark of giftedness (Geake,
2007b). Geake and Dobsons model also indicates how creative solutions or ideas are
selected from candidate variance with recourse to both internal and external (social)
criteria, which in turn inform further creative thinking. The model draws on an earlier
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in search of a creative solution to a problem generate greater variance, employ more
innovative selection criteria, and store the outcomes more efficiently in long-term
memory for later use. Moreover, Geake and Dobson (2005) suggest, gifted
extensive information processing that they typically employ, and not to discard outlier
thoughts too early. There is both behavioural (Carson, Peterson & Higgins, 2003) and
psychophysical (Vigneau, Caissie & Bors, 2006) evidence for this suggestion.
There is also neuroimaging evidence for the primary role of fluid analogising in
creative cognition. Geake and Hansen (2005; 2006; in progress) used fMRI to study
Wharton et al., 2000; Luo et al., 2003), activations were found in a bilateral fronto-
parietal network. As noted above, Geake and Hansen (2005) also found two areas of
left PFC where neural activity during fluid analogising correlated with verbal IQ as
regions for working memory engaged in a fluid or creative analogy task. A wider
knowledge base, it seems, can support a greater facility for fluid thinking, at least in
high-IQ subjects. More recently, Geake and Hansen (2006) demonstrated that fluid
analogical thinking across different fluid analogy types recruits the same fronto-
parietal network; further evidence for the claim of fluid analogising as a core
cognitive process. Additionally, as noted above, Geake and Hansen (in progress)
found an area of the right frontal cortex where neural activity during fluid analogising
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across types positively correlated with IQ as determined by high-level spatial
and lateralised PFC, suggests that a gifted persons success at specific intellectually
demanding tasks is significantly determined by how well their brain enables fluid
1991), mathematics (Geake, 2006a), science (Geake et al., 1996), and music
(Andreasen & Geake, 1998; Geake, 2007b). For example, the cognitive processes
delayed inhibition before selection, and performance critique (Andreasen & Geake,
cases, proficiency at fluid analogising can explain how these processes are seamlessly
CONCLUSION
Although neuroimaging studies of brain structure and function have been conducted
for well over a decade, the complexity of the human brain suggests that cognitive
neuroscience as a research discipline is still in its infancy. And within this nascent
field, studies of group differences necessarily await further publication of robust and
replicated data about the brain functioning of the general population. Nevertheless,
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findings from those few studies which have compared gifted with non-gifted subjects,
various academic and creative endeavours can be accounted for, including precocious
talent, rapid information processing, heightened cognitive control, and a desire for
enable high intelligence seems good career advice for many of todays gifted children.
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