Gray matter and intelligence factors: Is there a neuro-g?

Heterogeneous results among neuro-imaging studies using psychometric intelligence measures may result from the variety of tests used. The g-factor may provide a common metric across studies. Here we derived a g-factor from a battery of eight cognitive tests completed by 6929 young adults, 40 of whom also completed structural MRI scans. Regional gray matter (GM) was determined using voxel-based-morphometry (VBM) and correlated to g-scores. Results showed correlations distributed throughout the brain, but there was limited overlap with brain areas identified in a similar study that used a different battery of tests to derive g-scores. Comparable spatial scores (with g variance removed) also were derived from both batteries, and there was considerable overlap in brain areas where GM was correlated to the respective spatial scores. The results indicate that g-scores derived from different test batteries do not necessarily have equivalent neuro-anatomical substrates, suggesting that identifying a “neuro-g” will be difficult. The neuro-anatomical substrate of a spatial factor, however, appears more consistent and implicates a distributed network of brain areas that may be involved with spatial ability. Future imaging studies directed at identifying the neural basis of intelligence may benefit from using a psychometric test battery chosen with specific criteria.