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Songthawornpong N, Teasdale TW, Olesen MV, et al. Is There a Correlation Between the Number of Brain Cells and IQ?. Cereb Cortex. 2021;31(1):650-657doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa249.
Songthawornpong, N., Teasdale, T. W., Olesen, M. V., & Pakkenberg, B. (2021). Is There a Correlation Between the Number of Brain Cells and IQ?. Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 31(1), 650-657. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaa249
Songthawornpong, Nicharatch, et al. "Is There a Correlation Between the Number of Brain Cells and IQ?." Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) vol. 31,1 (2021): 650-657. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaa249
Songthawornpong N, Teasdale TW, Olesen MV, Pakkenberg B. Is There a Correlation Between the Number of Brain Cells and IQ?. Cereb Cortex. 2021 Jan 01;31(1):650-657. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa249. PMID: 32939536; PMCID: PMC7727338.
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Cereb Cortex. 2021 Jan 01;31(1):650-657. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa249.

Is There a Correlation Between the Number of Brain Cells and IQ?.

Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)

Nicharatch Songthawornpong, Thomas W Teasdale, Mikkel V Olesen, Bente Pakkenberg

Affiliations

  1. Research Laboratory for Stereology and Neuroscience, Department of Neurology, Bispebjerg-Frederiksberg Hospital, DK-2400 Copenhagen, Denmark.
  2. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen, DK-1353 Copenhagen, Denmark.
  3. Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, DK-2200 Copenhagen, Denmark.

PMID: 32939536 PMCID: PMC7727338 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa249

Abstract

Our access to a unique material of postmortem brains obtained from decades of data collection enabled a stereological analysis of the neuron numbers and correlation of results with individual premorbid intelligence quotient (IQ) data. In our sample of 50 brains from men, we find that IQ does not correlate with the number of brain cells in the human neocortex and was only weakly correlated to brain weight. Our stereological examination extended to measures of several other parameters that might be of relevance to intelligence, including numbers of cerebral glial cells (astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia) and the volume of key areas in the gray and white matter and of the cerebral ventricles, also showing near-zero nonsignificant correlations to IQ.

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].

Keywords: Børge Priens Prøve (BPP); cell numbers; human brain; intelligence quotient; stereology

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