A brief overview of structural and functional brain characteristics related to g is presented in the light of major neurobiological theories of intelligence: Neural Efficiency, P-FIT and Multiple-Demand system. These theories provide a framework to discuss the main objective of the paper: what is the relationship between individual alpha frequency (IAF) and g? Three studies were conducted in order to investigate this relationship: two correlational studies and a third study in which we experimentally induced changes in IAF by means of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS). (1) In a large scale study (n = 417), no significant correlations between IAF and IQ were observed. However, in males IAF positively correlated with mental rotation and shape manipulation and with an attentional focus on detail. (2) The second study showed sex-specific correlations between IAF (obtained during task performance) and scope of attention in males and between IAF and reaction time in females. (3) In the third study, individuals’ IAF was increased with tACS. The induced changes in IAF had a disrupting effect on male performance on Raven’s matrices, whereas a mild positive effect was observed for females. Neuro-electric activity after verum tACS showed increased desynchronization in the upper alpha band and dissociation between fronto-parietal and right temporal brain areas during performance on Raven’s matrices. The results are discussed in the light of gender differences in brain structure and activity.

This paper reviews the use of video games for measuring intelligence differences and reports two studies analyzing the relationship between intelligence and performance on a leisure video game. In the first study, the main focus was to design an Intelligence Test using puzzles from the video game. Forty-seven young participants played “Professor Layton and the curious village”® for a maximum of 15 hours and completed a set of intelligence standardized tests. Results show that the time required for completing the game interacts with intelligence differences: the higher the intelligence, the lower the time (d = .91). Furthermore, a set of 41 puzzles showed excellent psychometric properties. The second study, done seven years later, confirmed the previous findings. We finally discuss the pros and cons of video games as tools for measuring cognitive abilities with commercial video games, underscoring that psychologists must develop their own intelligence video games and delineate their key features for the measurement devices of next generation.

The present study concerns the relation of mental and bodily characteristics to one another during ageing. The ‘common cause’ theory of ageing proposes that declines are shared across multiple, seemingly-disparate functions, including both physical and intellectual abilities. The concept of ‘reserve’ suggests that healthier cognitive (and perhaps bodily) functions from early in life are protective against the effects of senescence across multiple domains. In three waves of physical and cognitive testing data from the longitudinal Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (n = 1,091 at age 70 years; n = 866 at 73; n = 697 at 76), we used multivariate growth curve modeling to test the ‘common cause’ and ‘reserve’ hypotheses. Support for both concepts was mixed: although levels of physical functions and cognitive functions were correlated with one another, physical functions did not decline together, and there was little evidence for shared declines in physical and mental functions. Early-life intelligence, a potential marker of system integrity, made a significant prediction of the levels, but not the slopes, of later life physical functions. These data suggest that common causes, which are likely present within cognitive functions, are not as far-reaching beyond the cognitive arena as has previously been suggested. They also imply that bodily reserve may be similar to cognitive reserve in that it affects the level, but not the slope, of ageing-related declines.

Several existing theoretical models predict that the individual capacity of working memory and abstract reasoning (fluid intelligence) strongly depends on certain features of neuronal oscillations, especially their cross-frequency coupling. Empirical evidence supporting these predictions is still scarce, but it makes the future studies on oscillatory coupling a promising line of research that can uncover the physiological underpinnings of fluid intelligence. Cross-frequency coupling may serve as the optimal level of description of neurocognitive processes, integrating their genetic, structural, neurochemical, and bioelectrical underlying factors with explanations in terms of cognitive operations driven by neuronal oscillations.

Here I briefly delineate my view about the main question of this International Seminar, namely, what should we expecting from the XXI Century regarding the advancements in intelligence research. This view can be summarized as ‘The Brain Connection’ (TBC), meaning that neuroscience will be of paramount relevance for increasing our current knowledge related to the key question: why are some people smarter than others? We need answers to the issue of what happens in our brains when the genotype and the environment are integrated. The scientific community has devoted great research efforts, ranging from observable behavior to hidden genetics, but we are still far from having a clear general picture of what it means to be more or less intelligent. After the discussion held with the panel of experts participating in the seminar, it is concluded that advancements will be more solid and safe increasing the collaboration of scientists with shared research interests worldwide. Paralleling current sophisticated analyses of how the brain computes, nowadays science may embrace a network approach.

Education has not changed from the beginning of recorded history. The problem is that focus has been on schools and teachers and not students. Here is a simple thought experiment with two conditions: 1) 50 teachers are assigned by their teaching quality to randomly composed classes of 20 students, 2) 50 classes of 20 each are composed by selecting the most able students to fill each class in order and teachers are assigned randomly to classes. In condition 1, teaching ability of each teacher and in condition 2, mean ability level of students in each class is correlated with average gain over the course of instruction. Educational gain will be best predicted by student abilities (up to r = 0.95) and much less by teachers’ skill (up to r = 0.32). I argue that seemingly immutable education will not change until we fully understand students and particularly human intelligence. Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students. Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with learning gains. This evidence is reviewed.

Our view is that intelligence, as expression of the complexity of the human brain and of its evolutionary path, represents an intriguing example of “system level brain plasticity”: tangible proofs of this assertion lie in the strong links intelligence has with vital brain capacities as information processing (i.e., pure, rough capacity to transfer information in an efficient way), resilience (i.e., the ability to cope with loss of efficiency and/or loss of physical elements in a network) and adaptability (i.e., being able to efficiently rearrange its dynamics in response to environmental demands). Current evidence supporting this view move from theoretical models correlating intelligence and individual response to systematic “lesions” of brain connectivity, as well as from the field of Noninvasive Brain Stimulation (NiBS). Perturbation-based approaches based on techniques as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), are opening new in vivo scenarios which could allow to disclose more causal relationship between intelligence and brain plasticity, overcoming the limitations of brain-behavior correlational evidence