The rich are different.... Smart kids, too.

LA Times

Brain Development Rate Linked to IQ

Smart children have a different rhythm in their heads — a seesaw pattern of growth that lags years behind other young people — say government scientists who mapped the brains of hundreds of children.

Seeking a link between neural anatomy and mental ability, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health and McGill University in Montreal discovered it where they least expected — not in sheer brain size or special structures, but in the patterns of childhood growth.

Brain development in children with the highest IQ peaked four years later than among average children, the researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Nature.

"Smart children really do develop differently, and here is the first physical evidence of that," said UCLA neuroscientist Paul Thompson, an expert on imaging and brain development. "You'd think they'd develop faster and earlier than normal kids. The surprise is they don't."

Philip Shaw at the NIMH child psychiatry branch and his colleagues periodically scanned the brains of 307 healthy children from age 5 to age 19.

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The scans revealed tell-tale waves of change that coursed through the brain's prefrontal cortex — a thick wrinkled carpet of cells that orchestrates memory, attention, perceptual awareness, language, reason and consciousness. "The story of intelligence is in the trajectory of brain development," Shaw said. "What differs with intelligence is the rate of these changes."

Among average children — those with an IQ measuring 83 to 108 — the growth of the cortex peaked at age 8, while among those with high intelligence — rated with an IQ of 109 to 120 — growth peaked at age 9.

The smartest children — those with IQs measuring 121 to 145 — displayed a pattern of brain growth that peaked at age 11 or 12, the researchers said.

The anatomical scans revealed that among the most intelligent children, the cortex displayed the most prolonged period of growth and the most rapid rate of change. The cortex also was thinner in early childhood, grew thicker, then thinned more rapidly.

"There is something very dynamic about these brains," said Judith L. Rapoport, chief of the NIMH child psychiatry branch. "What the intelligent children have is a very malleable brain." MORE

Does this explain the AV club? Maybe other kids brains are done sorting themselves out by 3rd or 4th Grade and so they can begin earlier with the sordid business of pecking orders and focus on the trial and error business of socialization? Or, and here's a whole different kettle of monkeys, maybe the business of socialization isn't a trial and error business. Why do some kids seem to effortlessly move among groups and attract and manage relationships well at early ages? Is there a Confidence scan? A Prince(ss) Charming Gene?