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It turns out size really doesn't matter — when it comes to intelligence and the brain, anyway.

Intelligence is based more on the quality of networks inside the brain rather than on size of the brain itself, the authors of a new study said.

"In some areas, we found that less tissue is actually associated with higher intelligence — it really depends on how efficient the brain is," said Rex Jung, one of the study's authors and a research scientist at the Mental Illness and Neuroscience Discovery Institute at the University of New Mexico.

Jung defines intelligence as "the ability to use one's mind to solve problems out in the world and to act accordingly."

Understanding how intelligence functions in the brain could help scientists preserve mental function longer in people who suffer from Alzheimer's, dementia or brain damage, Jung said.

"One of the goals of this isn't necessarily to make everyone smarter — the goal for me is to try to maintain a given level of intelligence, rather than trying to improve the brain," Jung said.

Researchers at the University of New Mexico and the University of California-Irvine studied brain scans of about 50 patients over the past 10 years to determine how intelligence resides in the brain.

Their work was published in issue 30 of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

The two researchers compared the size of different gray matter regions and how they function with networks of white matter. And they correlated that with IQ and other intelligence measures.

"Think of the gray parts of your brain as individual computers and the white parts are like the wires that network the Internet to various computers," Jung said. "In the more intelligent brains, you have lots of nodes exchanging data with each other over those white matter networks."

Some of the prime places associated with intelligence were in the brain's language nodes — a revelation that was a bit of a surprise — said Rich Haier, co-author and a professor in the UC-Irvine medical school.

"There's been this whole idea that you have a brain area, and that brain area does one thing," Haier said. "Our research showed that wasn't true — nodes do many things and they're all integrated."

The language nodes are located in the brain behind a person's left eye and above and a bit in front of their left ear, Jung said.

Some of the more interesting data for the study came out of looking at brains that had lesions, or damage, in certain areas, he said.

"It's interesting — you can put holes in lots of parts of the brain and it won't affect intelligence, but, if you put a hole in the language part of the brain, it reduces intelligence significantly," Jung said.

That's especially fascinating, because intelligence evolved before language in the human species, he said.

"Language is a complicated abstraction — it lets us do more complicated things," Jung said. "It's compelling that language was built on top of the intelligence network in the brain."

A study of 50 brain scans might not sound like a huge sample range, but it's the biggest group analyzed so far for this kind of research, Haier said.

"Most brain imaging studies are very small (in their) sampling, because imaging is very expensive," Haier said. "Rex and I were able to combine samples we had collected independently to get a bigger combined study group."

The findings were consistent across all the brains they studied, Haier added.

Haier's next steps for his research will be to look at how nodes work together and how they talk to each other — which could take another 10 to 20 years, he said.

Jung, in parallel, plans to study creativity in the brain, which is correlated to parts that are different from the intelligence network, he said.

"Intelligence and creativity have dynamic interplay in the brain, but they're not the same thing," Jung said. "There's a lot more going on in the brain than just intelligence."