Higher general intelligence is linked to stable, efficient, and typical brain connectivity patterns

Poster Session E - Monday, April 15, 2024, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Justin Ng^1,2 (jwk.ng@mail.utoronto.ca), Ju-Chi Yu², Jamie Feusner^1,2,3, Colin Hawco^1,2; ¹University of Toronto, ²Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, ³Karolinska Institutet

General intelligence, the general capacity to excel across situations, can be quantified by the positive correlations observed between nearly all cognitive tests. General intelligence is closely linked to academic and professional achievement, and its genetic component suggests potential intergenerational impacts. The shared performance across cognitive domains may arise from shared mechanisms. A recent hypothesis suggests that general intelligence emerges from the task-general capacity to dynamically and adaptively reorganize brain connectivity. Temporal reconfiguration can be assessed using dynamic functional connectivity (dFC), which captures the propensity of whole-brain connectivity to transition between a recurring repertoire of distinct states. Conventional dFC metrics focus on categorical state switching frequencies which do not fully assess individual variation in continuous connectivity reconfiguration. Here, we supplement frequency measures by quantifying within-state connectivity consistency, dissimilarity between connectivity across states, and conformity of individual connectivity to group-average state connectivity. We utilized resting-state fMRI data from the large-scale Human Connectome Project (n=950) and applied data-driven multivariate Partial Least Squares Correlation to explore associations between cognitive ability and temporal reconfiguration. Our findings reveal a positive association between general intelligence and stable maintenance of states characterized by distinct connectivity between networks involved in higher-order cognition, efficient reconfiguration (i.e., minimal connectivity changes during transitions between similar states, large connectivity changes between dissimilar states), and ability to sustain connectivity close to group-average state connectivity. This hints at fundamental properties of brain-behavior organization, suggesting that general cognitive processing capacity is supported by the ability to efficiently reconfigure between stable and population-typical connectivity patterns.

Topic Area: THINKING: Other