Getting better at chess, it turns out, isn’t merely a matter of thinking harder—it has more to do with what parts of the brain you use to think in the first place. Neuroscientists from Japan studied the brainy blood-flows of both professional and amateur shogi players (a chess-like game from Japan) and found that professionals are more apt to put on their intuitive thinking caps.
The study, published inScience, used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine which brain areas showed the most blood flow as professional and amateur shogi players tested their mettle during a match.
[The scientists] studied 11 professional players and 17 amateurs, and identified two brain activations that were specific to the pros. First, both groups of players were shown different shogi board patterns as well as other scenes, but only the experts showed activation in a portion of the parietal lobe known as the precuneus. The other brain difference occurred when the players were forced to quickly pick their next best move. The professionals’ brain scans revealed activity in a portion of the basal ganglion known as the caudate nucleus, while the amateurs’ scans did not.
Full story at Discover Blogs
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