14 DAY TRIAL // They say you can tell a lot about a person by looking into their eyes. Apparently, this saying is all the more true if you happen to be a brain scientist interested in pinning down a link between the blood vessels in a person's eye, the health of this individual's brain and their overall level of intelligence.
Psychological scientist Idan Shalev believes that the healthier a person's brain is, the more intelligent the person is bound to be.
By looking at the blood vessels found inside the eyes of several volunteers, the researcher hoped to collect data concerning the overall health condition of their brains.
As explained on the official website for the Association of Psychological Sciences, blood vessels in the eye and those providing nutrients and oxygen for the brain are not all that different.
Therefore, by analyzing the first, one can find out more about the latter.
The researchers found that the volunteers who had wider retinal venules had a lower IQ, both in their adulthood and during their childhood.
The cognitive deficits they displayed had to do with verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and executive function.
“It's remarkable that venular caliber in the eye is related, however modestly, to mental test scores of individuals in their 30s, and even to IQ scores in childhood,” the researchers say.