Alterations in excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters (glutamate and GABA, respectively) have been found in various neuropsychiatric disorders, but have not been examined in individuals with prodigious cognitive abilities. Understanding exceptional brain processing is critical for developing biomedical interventions for cognitive and neurodevelopmental atypicalities. We tested the eleven-fold world champion in mental calculation, G.M., and compared his right middle frontal gyrus, which has been associated with mathematical prodigy, to four healthy control expert calculators, who were not prodigies. We found substantially lower frontal glutamate/GABA compared to non-prodigy controls, but not glutamate or GABA individually, measured with magnetic resonance spectroscopy. We suggest that prefrontal glutamate/GABA is a potential marker of extraordinary cognitive skills.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 24 August 2018.
All research outputs
#14,920,631
of 25,385,509 outputs
Outputs from Neuroscience
#4,797
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Outputs of similar age
#175,070
of 341,562 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Neuroscience
#58
of 118 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,385,509 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 40th percentile – i.e., 40% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 118 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 50% of its contemporaries.
