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Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 9:17 pm
by rubin427
I'll briefly mention that there was a study published which explores the effects that long-term study of Baduk/Go has on brain development.
"White matter neuroplastic changes in long-term trained players of the game of “Baduk”1 (GO): A voxel-based diffusion-tensor imaging study"
abstractMy summary: Go experts who participated in this study had "photographable" differences in specific areas of the brain. The Go experts were from the korean baduk association and had on average 12 years of intensive study.
Since I had managed to overlook this article for about half a year, I thought I would mention it in case anyone else might be interested.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 2:06 am
by topazg
Yeah, I've got a full copy of this study. It makes for quite an interesting read
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 8:58 am
by entropi
I could not find the time to read all but one thing struck me: Estimated IQ of baduk experts is 93.
How is this possible?
People having mastered such a difficult mind game, have an average IQ of 93. Something must be wrong here.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:08 am
by topazg
entropi wrote:I could not find the time to read all but one thing struck me: Estimated IQ of baduk experts is 93.
How is this possible?
People having mastered such a difficult mind game, have an average IQ of 93. Something must be wrong here.
There is, but I suspect what's wrong is the IQ test's inability to test someone who has done nothing much other than Go from a young age.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:22 am
by entropi
I cannot give reference but I heard from different sources that chess grandmasters have a very high IQ on average. Why should it be different at Go?
Maybe because Go masters are from the far east where the visual thinking is culturally more dominant than analytical way of thinking. In the west this is the other way round. And since IQ tests are more oriented towards analytical thinking, this could explain it.
Of course I am just specualting. But this is a rather interesting issue.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:39 am
by daal
entropi wrote:
Maybe because Go masters are from the far east where the visual thinking is culturally more dominant than analytical way of thinking.
Is this so? (I have no idea). What aspects of asian cultures make this evident? Perhaps the pictorial element of the written word? I recall for example that the chinese character for "family" depicted a pig under a roof.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 9:58 am
by Shaddy
Specifically what is meant by "visual thinking" and "analytical thinking"? Visual thinking I think I can figure out, but analytical thinking is not so clear.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 10:13 am
by entropi
Shaddy wrote:Specifically what is meant by "visual thinking" and "analytical thinking"? Visual thinking I think I can figure out, but analytical thinking is not so clear.
Like the right-brain vs- left-brain issue. Analytical thinking requires analysis, i.e. dividing the problem into parts, solving each part separately and connecting the results.
Visual thinking requires seeing the whole picture.
For example:
Try to remember somebodies face analytically. He has brown eyes, short black hair, long nose, etc etc etc. You need tens of items like that and you are still far away from the real appearance of the face. But if you remember it visually, you just remember the whole face, that's it.
daal wrote:entropi wrote:
Maybe because Go masters are from the far east where the visual thinking is culturally more dominant than analytical way of thinking.
Is this so? (I have no idea). What aspects of asian cultures make this evident? Perhaps the pictorial element of the written word? I recall for example that the chinese character for "family" depicted a pig under a roof.
I have read it somewhere and made a lot of sense to me. It's also my subjective opinion but I cannot prove it. But discussing such issues, it is easy to fall into the trap of appearing "politically incorrect"
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 10:20 am
by Magicwand
IMO, asian think different.
we name abstract term and give name. (example: chi)
it is not proven but oriental medicine accept the term without proof.
i think go is a game were abstract thinking is necessary.
how do you define thinkness? how do you define aji?
how do you define flow? rhythm? hard to answer?
these are the terms that we know it is there but requires abstract thinking and hard to define.
yes i think chinese character has some effect on our thinking.
combination of 4 different character each with different meaning can be used to explain many different terms.
if you do not have too much experience in chinese character you wont even know what it mean by looking at individual definition. i guess we had alot of practice in abstract thinking with such practice.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 10:43 am
by Bill Spight
Shaddy wrote:Specifically what is meant by "visual thinking" and "analytical thinking"? Visual thinking I think I can figure out, but analytical thinking is not so clear.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 11:56 am
by Monadology
entropi wrote:For example:
Try to remember somebodies face analytically. He has brown eyes, short black hair, long nose, etc etc etc. You need tens of items like that and you are still far away from the real appearance of the face. But if you remember it visually, you just remember the whole face, that's it.
I don't see how that's an analytical approach at all. It's just a bunch of smaller visual memories. Analysis breaks something down to understand it on a fundamental level which is not happening here. Plus, how does this demonstrate how so-called visual thinking operates? According to this example it just magically solves the problem by producing the solution whole.
Perhaps you can use an example from an IQ test to demonstrate the difference (or some kind of problem). Trying to remember a face, whether in parts or in whole, doesn't involve actual thinking. Just recall.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 12:07 pm
by nagano
In regards to Western vs. Eastern thinking, here is an article on the subject:
http://www.livescience.com/2238-culture-fundamentally-alters-brain.html
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 1:28 pm
by oso
Monadology wrote:I don't see how that's an analytical approach at all. It's just a bunch of smaller visual memories. Analysis breaks something down to understand it on a fundamental level which is not happening here. Plus, how does this demonstrate how so-called visual thinking operates? According to this example it just magically solves the problem by producing the solution whole.
You just explained it perfectly.
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 1:35 pm
by entropi
Monadology wrote:entropi wrote:For example:
Try to remember somebodies face analytically. He has brown eyes, short black hair, long nose, etc etc etc. You need tens of items like that and you are still far away from the real appearance of the face. But if you remember it visually, you just remember the whole face, that's it.
I don't see how that's an analytical approach at all. It's just a bunch of smaller visual memories. Analysis breaks something down to understand it on a fundamental level which is not happening here.
When I tell you Mr. X has brown eyes, this information is not visual. It becomes visual only when I show a picture of his eye.
But ok, that's a matter of definition. If you want to call it visual as soon as you see the word "brown", be my guest. Let's call it visual.
Even if we call it a bunch of smaller visual memories, it does break something down to understand it.
I don´t understand what is not clear about the example. Do you mean saying that he has brown eyes cannot be described as a part of analyzing his face?
Monadology wrote:Plus, how does this demonstrate how so-called visual thinking operates? According to this example it just magically solves the problem by producing the solution whole.
It is not magic, it is a different part of human brain operating. You don't recognize peoples faces by recalling the eye color, the length of the nose etc. But if you want to describe a criminal to the police, you can use this analytical method if you don't have any visual information like a picture.
Monadology wrote:Perhaps you can use an example from an IQ test to demonstrate the difference (or some kind of problem). Trying to remember a face, whether in parts or in whole, doesn't involve actual thinking. Just recall.
No I cannot, because I neither have an IQ test available, nor the time to look for an example that would satisfy you.
But recalling is actual thinking. If you want to see it as a question, put the question like "
Is this a photo of Mr. X?".
Re: Neurological study regarding Go's effects on the brain
Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2011 1:39 pm
by daal
I hope this isn't going too off topic, but while it's not about the effects of go on the brain, it is about how the brain might affect go...
Here is another link regarding differences in western and asian thought. It is a
pdf summary of the book
The Geography of Thought by Richard Nesbitt. One of the points that the book makes is that one's culture influences the thought process.
Here is a quote from a description of the book that can be found
here.
"East Asian thought tends to be more holistic," says Nisbett, who also heads the U-M Culture and Cognition Program. "Holistic approaches attend to the entire field, and make relatively little use of categories and formal logic. They also emphasize change, and they recognize contradiction and the need for multiple perspectives, searching for the 'Middle Way' between opposing propositions.
"Westerners are more analytic, paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to explain and predict its behavior."
In study after study described in the book, Nisbett and colleagues from China, Korea, and Japan have found that East Asians and Americans responded in qualitatively different ways to the same stimulus situation. In one experiment, designed to test whether East Asians are more likely to attend to the whole while Westerners are more likely to focus on a particular object within the whole, Japanese and Americans viewed the same animated underwater scenes, then reported what they had seen.
"The first statement by Americans usually referred to a large fish in the foreground," says Nisbett. "They would say something like, 'There was what looked like a trout swimming to the right.' The first statement by Japanese usually referred to background elements: 'There was a lake or a pond.' The Japanese made about 70 percent more statements than Americans about background aspects of the environment, and 100 percent more statements about relationships with inanimate aspects of the environment, for example, that a big fish swam past some gray seaweed."
It seems to me plausible that viewing the world holistically and relationship-oriented might be advantageous to a go player.