Abstract: Chess has long been seen as the most cerebral of board games, a mentally taxing battle of wits that only the most intelligent and psychologically resilient can ever hope to master while the rest of us are doomed to draughts and Happy Families. But is this really true? Atherton, Chen and colleagues suggest, in two new studies, that chess playing might not require the kinds of lofty higher intellectual thought processes that we tend to assume [ 1. Atherton, M. et al. (2002) A functional MRI study of high-level cognition: I. the game of chess. Cogn. Brain Res. Published online ahead of print: DOI: 10.1016/S0926-6410(02)00207-0 Google Scholar , 2. Chen, X. et al. (2002) A functional MRI study of high-level cognition: II. the game of GO. Cogn. Brain Res. Published online ahead of print: DOI: 10.1016/S0926-6410(02)00206-9 Google Scholar ]. Using fMRI scanning, they set out to record what happens in the brains of chess players as they study the board and plan their next move. They also performed a companion study investigating what happens in the brain of GO players confronted with the same task [ 2. Chen, X. et al. (2002) A functional MRI study of high-level cognition: II. the game of GO. Cogn. Brain Res. Published online ahead of print: DOI: 10.1016/S0926-6410(02)00206-9 Google Scholar ]. GO is a traditional Chinese board game that, like chess, requires exceptional strategic skills. However, there are no individually identified pieces with specific rules about how and where they can move, and the mental strategies used in GO are assumed to be fundamentally different from those used in chess. Interestingly, whereas computer programs like Deep Fritz can give even the world chess champion pause for thought, current GO programs do not challenge even amateur players.
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-12-01
Language: en
Type: review
Indexed In: ['crossref', 'pubmed']
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Cited By Count: 6
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