The brains of people with excellent general knowledge are particularly efficiently wired.
[...] The researchers examined the brains of 324 men and women with a special form of magnetic resonance imaging called diffusion tensor imaging. This makes it possible to reconstruct the pathways of nerve fibres and thus gain an insight into the structural network properties of the brain. By means of mathematical algorithms, the researchers assigned an individual value to the brain of each participant, which reflected the efficiency of his or her structural fibre network.
The participants also completed a general knowledge test called the Bochum Knowledge Test, which was developed in Bochum by Dr. Rüdiger Hossiep. It is comprised of over 300 questions from various fields of knowledge such as art and architecture or biology and chemistry. The team led by Erhan Genç finally investigated whether the efficiency of structural networking is associated with the amount of general knowledge stored.
The result: People with a very efficient fibre network had more general knowledge than those with less efficient structural networking.
The Neural Architecture of General Knowledge. European Journal of Personality, 2019; DOI: 10.1002/per.2217
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:24PM
I'd personally prefer public research be public as well but the choices are link to the paywalled version or not run the story. We don't put stories up without a link to the relevant information. Now if you lot want to copy pasta the DOI number into Sci-Hub or some such that's none of our business but it'd be our asses if we pointed links there ourselves.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.