Difference in brain activation patterns of individuals with high and low intelligence in linguistic and visuo-spatial tasks: An EEG study

The present EEG study was conducted to determine the difference and/or similarity in information processing patterns between individuals with higher intelligence and those with lower intelligence while they solved language and visuo-spatial tasks with different levels of complexity. We hypothesized that task type and complexity influence the information processing mechanism of high intelligent individuals. Coherence value was measured in theta and alpha frequency bands to determine the activation pattern in terms of communication between brain regions. Results indicate that individuals with higher intelligence efficiently modulate their information processing mechanism by focusing on internal and external stimuli depending on the task type and difficulty. Based on our finding we also propose a novel method, called μ index, as an alternative measure to distinguish between individuals with high and low intelligence potential in language and visuo-spatial tasks. •Task type and difficulty influences the information processing mechanism.•Individuals with high intelligence modulate their resource allocation pattern.•Individuals with high intelligence solve linguistic problem with internal attention.•Individuals with high intelligence solve visuo-spatial problems by focusing on external stimuli.•Novel method in EEG analysis is proposed.