Associations between cortical thickness and general intelligence in children, adolescents and young adults

Abstract

Neuroimaging research indicates that human intellectual ability is related to brain structure including the thickness of the cerebral cortex. Most studies indicate that general intelligence is positively associated with cortical thickness in areas of association cortex distributed throughout both brain hemispheres. In this study, we performed a cortical thickness mapping analysis on data from 182 healthy typically developing males and females ages 9 to 24 years to identify correlates of general intelligence (g) scores. To determine if these correlates also mediate associations of specific cognitive abilities with cortical thickness, we regressed specific cognitive test scores on g scores and analyzed the residuals with respect to cortical thickness. The effect of age on the association between cortical thickness and intelligence was examined. We found a widely distributed pattern of positive associations between cortical thickness and g scores, as derived from the first unrotated principal factor of a factor analysis of Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) subtest scores. After WASI specific cognitive subtest scores were regressed on g factor scores, the residual score variances did not correlate significantly with cortical thickness in the full sample with age covaried. When participants were grouped at the age median, significant positive associations of cortical thickness were obtained in the older group for g-residualized scores on Block Design (a measure of visual-motor integrative processing) while significant negative associations of cortical thickness were observed in the younger group for g-residualized Vocabulary scores. These results regarding correlates of general intelligence are concordant with the existing literature, while the findings from younger versus older subgroups have implications for future research on brain structural correlates of specific cognitive abilities, as well as the cognitive domain specificity of behavioral performance correlates of normative gray matter thinning during adolescence.

Keywords: cortical thickness; development; general intelligence; neuroimaging; specific cognitive abilities.

Figure 1

Negative associations between cortical thickness and age. Clockwise from top left: lateral left hemisphere, lateral right hemisphere, medial left hemisphere, medial right hemisphere. Colorbar shows cluster-level family-wise corrected p-values; blue = negative partial correlations, red = positive partial correlations).

Figure 2

Positive associations of cortical thickness with (A) general intelligence factor scores, and (B) g-residualized Vocabulary scores; with sex covaried. Clockwise from top left within A and B: lateral left hemisphere, lateral right hemisphere, medial left hemisphere, medial right hemisphere. Colorbar shows cluster-level family-wise corrected p-values; blue = negative partial correlations, red = positive partial correlations).

Figure 3

Positive associations of cortical thickness with general intelligence factor scores, with sex and age covaried. Clockwise from top left: lateral left hemisphere, lateral right hemisphere, medial left hemisphere, medial right hemisphere. Colorbar shows cluster-level family-wise corrected p-values; blue = negative partial correlations, red = positive partial correlations).