Smart Brains Take More Time to Solve Complex Problems, Simulation Study Finds

A study by researchers at the Berlin Institute of Health and Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin found that participants with higher intelligence scores were only quicker when tackling simple tasks, while they took longer to solve difficult problems than subjects with lower IQ scores. In personalized brain simulations of the 650 participants, the researchers could determine that brains with reduced synchrony between brain areas literally "jump to conclusions" when making decisions, rather than waiting until upstream brain regions could complete the processing steps needed to solve the problem. The study sheds light on how the brain's decision-making processes work and why different people make different decisions.