Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 7 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JZ, Scotland, UK.
Curr Biol. 2013 Aug 19;23(16):R673-6. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.07.021.
Some people are cleverer than others. I think it would be a good thing if more biologists began with that observation as the starting point for their research. Why? Because it is a prominent and consistent way in which people differ from each other; because the measurements we make of people's cleverness produce scores that are correlated with important life outcomes; because it is interesting to discover the mechanisms that produce these individual differences; and because understanding these mechanisms might help to ameliorate those states in which cognitive function is low or declining.
有些人比其他人更聪明。我认为，如果更多的生物学家从这个观察结果出发，将其作为研究的起点，那将是一件好事。为什么呢？因为这是人与人之间存在显著且一致差异的方式；因为我们对人们聪明程度的测量结果与重要的生活结果相关；因为发现产生这些个体差异的机制很有趣；并且因为了解这些机制可能有助于改善认知功能低下或下降的状态。
