Bobby Seagull, mathematics teacher, 36 years old, from London, who first impressed viewers on University Challenge In 2017, appeared recently in BBC2's Horizon: The Great British Intelligence Test. His brain was scanned by Dr Simon Cox at the University Edinburgh to test whether there is a correlation between the brain's sizes to having a higher or lower IQ.
His scan revealed that intelligent people do not necessarily have bigger brains, and despite Seagull's intelligence, it was revealed that his brain is no bigger than an average person's. However, the compact gray matter in his brain pointed to 'slightly higher cognitive ability.'
Importance of the gray and white matter on the brain
University Challenge star Bobby Seagull has an extremely average brain or even a little bit lower than average, according to Dr Cox after the scan results were out.
When asked by BBC2's Horizon host, Dr Hannah Fry if he meant that Seagull has a smaller brain, Dr Cox replied that Seagull indeed has a brain that is a little bit lower than the average.
Dr Cox added, despite the size of Seagull's brain, he has a very nice example of gray matter. These gray matter areas around the exterior part of the brain filled out into the skull, representing a very healthy brain.
More so, it seems that people who have more gray matter in the brains have slightly higher cognitive ability as they play the most significant part in allowing humans to function normally every day. The gray matter serves to process signals and information in the brain.
Equally important, Dr Cox noted based on his observations that the white matter of the brain, houses all of the diverse connections across all of the areas in the brain. White matter is located in the subcortical tissues of the brain, which contains the extensions of neurons, the nerve fibers or axons which are covered in myelin sheath that protects the axons from injury and speeds up the electrical transmission of nerve signals.
Dr Cox added that the gray and white matter contains roots between different areas of the brain and how information is being transmitted from one neuron to another.
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Online IQ test by BBC2's Horizon
BBC2's Horizon has revealed the results of its online IQ test, which was participated by more than 250,000 people coming from different age groups and developed in collaboration with neuroscientists from Imperial College London.
The co-host of the show and also psychiatrist, Dr Michael Mosley explained that their online IQ test is unlike the conventional one for it measures various aspects of intelligence, varying from cognitive skills such as problem-solving to memory and verbal ability.
The results of their online IQ test revealed that a person's problem-solving skills peak during the twenties, and gradually declines as the person gets older. As a result, the experts said that 40-year-old adults have similar problem-solving capacities as 12-year-olds.
However, MailOnline reported that it is not all bad news for those individuals who are advancing in years. The experts found that when a person reaches its eighties, vocabularies continue to improve, rather than peaking in the fifties or sixties, as was once thought.
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