Executive neurofunctionality: A comparative study in high intellectual abilities [Neurofuncionalidad ejecutiva: Estudio comparativo en las altas capacidades]

Resumen

Introduction. From a differential perspective, high intellectual ability is an expression of intellectual functioning with characteristic functional correlates and structural correlates of the underlying neural activity that suggests an improved executive capacity as a relevant characteristic, highlighting in it a more effective working memory. Development. The neuroscientific evidences about the neural mechanisms that can explain the differences are analyzed between the intellectual functioning of the high intellectual ability and the typical intellectual capacity. The possibilities that offer the recording of evoked potentials to capture fundamental mental processes that allow explain the differences between them are put under review. Conclusions. Neuroscientific evidences through electroencephalography or other mental imagery techniques show that the brain, as a structural correlate of high intellectual abilities, has greater neural efficiency, interconnectivity and differences in the cytoarchitecture. It is a brain that captures, understands and interprets reality in a qualitatively different manner. But the neural differences are structural and the high intellectual capacity emerges from its plasticity functional. That is, it is a brain prepared for better executive regulation that is not always directly related with excellence and the eminent manifestation of its potentiality because it requires other conditioning factors such as motivation, the organization of knowledge, personal traits of temperament or perfectionism, and exogenous conditions. © 2018 Revista de Neurología.