Neurobiological Aspects of Intelligence

Abstract

Intelligence is usually understood as the capacity to apply psychic functions in new situations and in accomplishing new tasks. For the description of intelligence, depending on the problem to be solved, a number of different functional material and complexity factors are required which include among others memory, comprehension, production and thinking. It is therefore obvious that intelligence is not a single well specified function, but denotes a multiform and flexible property of human behaviour, integrated in the functional sphere of the so-called higher human brain functions. These comprise the conscious activities of object perception, learning, memory, thinking, imagining, language, planning and purposive volition and action. In these functions the two fundamental facts of conscious life are manifested, namely the certainty of one’s own existence and self availability, as well as the reality of an outer world. Consciousness, intelligence and emotionality appear as different aspects of that particular functional layer which characterizes the human condition of existence and behaviour. By these functions, also a separate class of products is produced in the form of symbolic abstractions of the inner and outer reality. These products, especially, underlie thinking and speech, and consequently intelligent behaviour. In totality they form the structures which are summarized under the name of culture or “Geist” according to German philosophic terminology.