The role of frontal and parietal cortex in the performance of gifted and average adolescents in a mental rotation task

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 15; no. 5; p. e0232660
• Main Authors: Anomal, Renata Figueiredo, Brandão, Daniel Soares, Porto, Silvia Beltrame, de Oliveira, Sóstenes Silva, de Souza, Rafaela Faustino Lacerda, Fiel, José de Santana, Gomes, Bruno Duarte, Pires, Izabel Augusta Hazin, Pereira, Antonio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 13.05.2020; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adolescent cognition; Adolescents; Amplitudes; Biology and Life Sciences; Biomedical engineering; Brain; Brain research; Cerebral cortex; Cerebral hemispheres; Cognitive ability; Cognitive tasks; Core curriculum; Cortex (frontal); Cortex (parietal); Displays (Marketing); EEG; Electroencephalography; Engineering; Event-related potentials; Gifted children; Gifted persons; Hemispheres; Hemispheric laterality; Intelligence; Mathematical ability; Mathematics; Medicine and Health Sciences; Mental task performance; Neurosciences; Physical Sciences; Physiological aspects; Power (Philosophy); Psychological aspects; Quotients; Research and Analysis Methods; Response time; Rotation (Geometry); Setting (Literature); Short term memory; Social Sciences; Students; Studies; Technology; Teenagers; Time; Visual tasks; Youth; Brazil
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0232660

Visual-spatial abilities are usually neglected in academic settings, even though several studies have shown that their predictive power in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains exceeds that of math and verbal ability. This neglect means that many spatially talented youths are not identified and nurtured, at a great cost to society. In the present work, we aim to identify behavioral and electrophysiological markers associated with visual spatial-ability in intellectually gifted adolescents (N = 15) compared to age-matched controls (N = 15). The participants performed a classic three-dimensional mental rotation task developed by Shepard and Metzler (1971) [33] while event-related potentials were measured in both frontal and parietal regions of interest. While response time was similar in the two groups, gifted subjects performed the test with greater accuracy. There was no indication of interhemispheric asymmetry of ERPs over parietal regions in both groups, although interhemispheric differences were observed in the frontal lobes. Moreover, intelligence quotient and working memory measures predicted variance in ERP's amplitude in the right parietal and frontal hemispheres. We conclude that while gifted adolescents do not display a different pattern of electroencephalographic activity over the parietal cortex while performing the mental rotation task, their performance is correlated with the amplitude of ERPs in the frontal cortex during the execution of this task.