The whole topic is very interesting.
I guess like most nature/nurture debates the truth is somewhere in the middle but the conclusions that Dr. Amidzic arrived at are very interesting. He seemed to sum up my supposed style of play very precisely.
I wonder how you would train up other areas of the brain? Would it be more important to train these areas up or would it be a better idea to concentrate on the areas of the brain that are already strong, for me the areas that deals with tactics?
I can still see a lot of uses for this type of research, anyone else got any ideas how it could be used?

Pronounced differences in the magnitude and distribution of brain activity point to different mechanisms of brain processing and to differences in the functional brain organization of gifted and average persons. My 10 years long-term studies on chess players suggest that the training process cannot change that differences, which indicates that giftedness is genetically determined and thus can be early assessed and measured.

Regarding the usage of that technology in other areas then chess, it is important to mention that mental talent is one of the key factors that determine the value of a player in sports that require athletes to anticipate their opponents’ actions, such as soccer, volleyball, basketball, tennis, etc. Club managers and professional coaches need an additional and more accurate method for the selection and identification of players with mental talent. Visual observation, the traditional selection method, is a very subjective and inefficient way of identifying mentally talented players, since coaches need a couple of years to reach a conclusion.

The first study with many GM, IM, FM and weaker players as a control group started 10 years ago and has been publish in Nature in 2001 (Amidzic et al. 2001. Pattern of focal gamma bursts in chess players. Nature, Vol. 412, 603).

The broadcast date for the Horizon documentary is Wednesday 17th February.

Well Magnus, as I wrote in my previous comment, regardless you are training or not, your result will not be changed through the training process. In the long-term study in the past 10 years some test persons tried to do that, but nobody succeed to improve the test results. Even if this sounds odd for you specializing in cognitive neuropsychology, that is the fact. And since you are specialist in neuropsychology, please write your full name so the readers can find you in Internet and learn from your studies, your new knowledge and contribution to the science you have been created during your life, and please explain to us why the measurement results in chess are not changing despise “plasticity in the brain”? Since you are using words like “mind” in you comment, please explain what the “mind” is, but not psychological bla bla, but detailed, the facts, the physics of mind, so that I can create an artificial “mind” in my laboratory. I don’t know what the “mind” is and how “mind” works, but I am ready to learn from you.

Magnus, as a “specialist in neuropsychology” who prefer to stay anonymous, you should have learned by now that the definition of science (from Latin scientia) is the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. The goal of science is the creation of new knowledge that will benefit society. That is what I am doing, creating something useful. And you? The definition of criticism is the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes. Since there is no evidence from the scientific community regarding any perceived faults or mistakes in my work, your comments are not even criticism. Criticism requires a lot of knowledge, and I don’t see any knowledge in your comments. You are using words and phrases that still have no explanation in physics trying to impress non-scientific audience. Please forgive me that I cannot continue that low level non-scientific discussion about science with you any more.

Evasive, dr. Amidzic. And your are steering clear of very(!) basic principles for making actual statements about causality, which are childishly “low-level”, to use your degrading phrase. Your comments here are so defensive that it’s almost like you are confronted with your lack of understanding the most elementary principles of science?

Your definition of science is not adding anything to this discussion, and seems like your way of trying to hold on to your own position as the bloated “expert”. Now, you still need to face your FUNDAMENTAL lack of experimental validity NEEDED to make statements about causality. It is so extremely low-level (I love this phrase now), and I can’t understand why you can’t elaborate on HOW you actually see this as being explained by your own research?

It’s been mentioned before:
“Similar gamma-band activity has been observed during examinations of novice and expert air traffic controllers and pilots, Dr. Jantzen added. He cautioned, however, that “one must be careful in attributing causal role to differences in cortical activity It is possible, as the authors are careful to point out, that these differences reflect the impact of experience and not innate ability or strategy.”

I found this VERY much in line with everything I’ve already written. You make causal statements from pure correlations from EEG data.

Your research is in many ways redundant without the application of a more creative design because the mentioned frontal activity in the paragraph above is documented in nearly every study separating activity in novices vs. experts AND in differences between learning phases and decreased prefrontal activity post learning phases.

That this is valid in chess is not news. You’re just another clown who reports what the machine says about electrochemical impulses, and then you write it down. You need to be a lot more creative with your experimental design if you ever want to say something new in this field.

You come off as a small, narcissistic, aggressive and defensive mind, who got his hands on a big expensive machine. This is not nearly enough. You’re lacking creativity in your experimental design, and maybe also in your way of thinking about chess. Creativity and openness to conflicting ideas could help you improve your chess.

“Since there is no evidence from the scientific community regarding any perceived faults or mistakes in my work”

I didn’t say that it was. I’m saying that your conclusion about causality are false. That is backed up by dr. Janzen, by the way. Maybe it is hereditary, but there is no way to tell from your study, so you ARE faced with the same criticism from others in the “scientific community”, you are just not understanding your own results or comments made about them.
Nature did NEVER publish an article where you made these proposterous claims. They published it as a cute 1-page story about neuroscience and chess.

“The goal of science is the creation of new knowledge that will benefit society. That is what I am doing, creating something useful. And you?”

It is not new knowledge, nor is it useful if you apply it based on your false nature/nurture conclusion – it could even be harmful. But go on and fool those people in Brazil. Make those $$$s.

I’ll be sure to send this correspondence to colleagues and the brazilians you are selling this to. You have been embarassingly arrogant and angry from the very first comment. Stop being so sensitive and get down from your high horse. This is a huge field and there are thousands of us.

I am not sure that I like the way these posts are going.
My experience of Dr. Ognjen is that he is a very professional and knowledgeable individual who has dedicated his life to searching for the truth.
I will personally not get involved with any of the comments here as far as to say that personal attacks will not be tolerated on gingergm.
Simon Williams

While Magnus’ tone here has been rude and confrontational, his raised some interesting points.

I looked up the papers published in Nature (2001) and Journal of Psychophysiology (2006). They seem rather cautious (as honest scientific research should be); claiming merely that the EEG research supports and extends the standard chunking theories of expert memory: Professional players access long-term memory stored in the neocortex, while the amateurs are busy encoding new information in the temporal lobe (hippocampus maybe).

Many in the expertise research tradition have struggled to find evidence of innate differences apart from serious neurological disorders. K. Anders Ericsson has even claimed that height and body size are the only known genetically determined limitations on skilled performance (in sports where those physical attributes are relevant). On the other hand:

“We reject an important role for innate ability. It is quite plausible, however, that heritable individual differences might influence processes related to motivation and the original enjoyment of the activities in the domain[...]” (Ericsson, K.A., R.T. Krampe & C. Tesch-Römer (1993). Psychol. Rev. 100, p.399).

By the way, I’m not so sure that this “no innate abilities, only motivation and hard work” is the standard belief of an average audience. The view of Einsten, Mozart, Da Vinci, Capablanca etc. etc. as innately gifted are very popular and intuitively appealing. But it has been hard to prove until now, according to Ericsson.

The final paragraph of Amidzic, Riehle & Elbert (2006) points forward to the arguments Dr. Amidzic presents here:

“It is possible that the chunks, their creation, and the ability of the brain to store and execute chunks in the neocortex (creation and establishment of skills) are what determines giftedness for a particular task and that they are the key factor in the creation of expert memory, and not just that of chess players.” (p.257)

If there is now new evidence that can clarify to what extent expert/amateur memory differences are innate or built up by training, that will be very interesting to hear about. I certainly hope I will be able to see the Horizons show at some point even here in Norway!

Alexander, I found this: What Makes a Genius?

Simon W probably will have more details.

[...] expect that most of you have read an earlier post, where Stuart Conquest and I were plugged up to an EEG machine for  [...]

I’m pleased to be made aware of Dr Amidzic’s research through this blog but I’m left with more questions than answers. I’m a statistician (and therefore qualified to comment on his study designs and data analysis although I haven’t read his papers) but will approach this primarily from the perspective of a mature adult player currently around 2000-2100 Elo strength and keen to improve (this is a chess blog after all!). My main question would be: how accurate a prediction of peak chess playing strengths can he make from his brain scans of chess players? (I suspect the answer is ‘not very accurate’ as presumably psychological factors such as motivation to train, self-confidence during a game and so on also need to be taken into account?) I imagine this question would be of even more interest to a player of Simon Williams’s standard. The financial implications for grandmasters of that standard would be quite considerable if they knew from their brain scan that they had the potential to increase their rating by 100 points or more.