Oct

23

An article in Technology Review highlights research into the tissues connecting neurons in the brain and their effect on intelligence. If the market is smarter than any of its participants, what can a trader observe about its information paths?

"But what if the key to intelligence is neither an individual area of the brain nor its total volume but the network over which information is transmitted and integrated? In 2007, [Rex Jung, a neuroscientist at the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, NM,] and Richard Haier, now professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Irvine, developed the first comprehensive theory drawn from neuroimaging of how the brain gives rise to intelligence. Gathering information from 37 published papers that had used imaging to study intelligence, they mapped out the brain areas that had been pinpointed in at least a third of the studies to sketch a network of regions spanning the frontal and parietal lobes.

The network consists of about 10 nodes, or clusters of cells, that had been linked to attention, working memory, and facial recognition, among other cognitive functions. Applying existing theories of how information flows in the brain, Jung and Haier hypothesized that neural signals travel from nodes near the back of the brain, where sensory data is collected and synthesized, to those in the frontal lobes, which are responsible for decision making and planning. The connections between these nodes, they argued, are just as critical as the nodes themselves. 'If the nodes of a network aren't communicating effectively and efficiently, then the network won't function efficiently,' says Jung."

"Some of the newest theories of intelligence suggest that the crucial factor may be how efficiently information moves around the brain, rather than just how quickly. In a recent study led by Martijn P. van den Heuvel, a neuroscientist at University Medical Center Utrecht, in the Netherlands, researchers defined efficiency as the number of links it takes to get from one node to another–both in specific brain areas and all over the brain. Just as a direct flight from Paris to Chicago would be considered more efficient than one with a layover in London, a direct link between two parts of the brain would be more efficient than an indirect route."


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