Department of Neurological Sciences, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA; Center for Magnetoencephalography, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA.
Department of Neurological Sciences, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA; Center for Magnetoencephalography, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA; Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2020 Apr;42:100770. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100770. Epub 2020 Feb 19.
Fluid intelligence, the ability to problem-solve in novel situations, is linked to higher-order cognitive abilities, and to academic achievement in youth. Previous research has demonstrated that fluid intelligence and the underlying neural circuitry continues to develop throughout adolescence. Neuroimaging studies have predominantly focused on identifying the spatial distribution of brain regions associated with fluid intelligence, with only a few studies examining the temporally-sensitive cortical oscillatory dynamics underlying reasoning abilities. The present study collected magnetoencephalography (MEG) during an abstract reasoning task to examine these spatiotemporal dynamics in a sample of 10-to-16 year-old youth. We found increased cortical activity across a distributed frontoparietal network. Specifically, our key results showed: (1) age was associated with increased theta activity in occipital and cerebellar regions, (2) robust sex differences were distributed across frontoparietal regions, and (3) that specific frontoparietal regions differentially predicted abstract reasoning performance among males versus females despite similar mean performance. Among males, increased theta activity mediated the relationship between age and faster reaction times; conversely, among females, decreased theta mediated the relationship between age and improved accuracy. These findings may suggest that males and females engage in distinct neurocognitive strategies across development to achieve similar behavioral outcomes during fluid reasoning tasks.
流体智力，即解决新情境问题的能力，与高阶认知能力以及青少年时期的学业成绩有关。先前的研究表明，流体智力和潜在的神经回路在整个青春期都在继续发展。神经影像学研究主要集中在识别与流体智力相关的脑区的空间分布，只有少数研究探讨了推理能力的潜在时间敏感的皮质振荡动力学。本研究在一项抽象推理任务中收集了脑磁图 (MEG)，以在 10 至 16 岁的青少年样本中检查这些时空动力学。我们发现，在分布式额顶网络中，皮质活动增加。具体而言，我们的主要结果表明：（1）年龄与枕叶和小脑区域的θ活动增加有关，（2）强烈的性别差异分布在额顶区域，（3）尽管男性和女性的平均表现相似，但特定的额顶区域对男性和女性的抽象推理表现具有不同的预测作用。在男性中，θ 活动的增加介导了年龄与更快的反应时间之间的关系；相反，在女性中，θ 的减少介导了年龄与准确性提高之间的关系。这些发现可能表明，男性和女性在整个发育过程中采用不同的神经认知策略，以在流体推理任务中达到类似的行为结果。
