Chess and the brain

Chess is well-accepted as being the ultimate battle of the brains but does chess make you more intelligent? And are the best chess players the most intelligent players?

Research suggest that the answer to both of those questions is yes. In the book The Overflowing Brain written by the famous Swedish neuroscientist Torkel Klingberg, Torkel discussed an interesting study called the Einstein study.

The outcome of said study demonstrated that out of many different mental activities like solving crossword puzzles, reading, playing a musical instrument and many more, chess was the most effective in not only maintaining your mental powers but also increasing them in terms of actual performance on an IQ test.  

This contradicts the notion that brain training does not work. The brain has repeatedly been shown to be flexible and able to change by the virtue of its amazing plasticity turning many studies that seek to prove otherwise on its head. For instance, something as simple as meditating daily for a month can cause permanent changes to your brain.

Furthermore, two extensive review articles published in the journal Intelligence confirmed that chess players are smarter than non-chess players and that the more intelligent the chess player is the better the chess player, as discussed on the website The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/what-chess-players-can-teach-us-about-intelligence-and-expertise-72898

Still, talent obviously plays a role. If two players that play exactly the same amount of chess end up having completely different ratings we can conclude that the difference between the two players is due to different levels of inborn talent.

Now, what can we conclude if all this research is indeed correct? Well, for starters chess is indeed correlated with intelligence, chess players are on average more intelligent than non-chess players and the higher the rating of a player the more intelligent the chess player is.

Regardless of rating though, playing chess can indeed be of great benefit to all of our brains. So you can happily finish your games and keep solving those tactics knowing that it is not all just a fun way to waste of your time.

Some trivia on chess and the brain:

1. Although chess has been associated with activity in more than one brain area it has also surprisingly been shown to be associated with an area in the brain called the fusiform face area. This part of the brain is used when recognizing faces and chess players seem to have “hijacked” this area in order to quickly recognize chess patterns.
2. Chess may lead to brain shrinkage. This suggests that bigger is not always better. Studies  have associated chess with localised brain shrinkage in certain areas of the brain. This could be a sign of an increased neural efficiency but more studies is needed on the subject.