If your IQ is 120 or higher, then your brain manifests creativity in a different way than 91 percent of the population, if a recent study by the MIND Research Network is accurate.

Rex Jung, a research scientist at MRN and an assistant professor at The University of New Mexico Department of Neurosurgery, made the unusual discovery when scanning the brains of 56 college-age students.

The scans were part of a three-year, $600,000 study about creativity in the brain sponsored by the Templeton Foundation.

What he found by looking at the scans was that a chemical associated with creativity called N-acetylaspartate, or NAA, plays a different role in the brains of those with average IQs than it does in those with high IQs of 120 and above.

"It's a funny kind of finding, and I wish I knew why," Jung said. "This is the first time we've seen real biological evidence that creativity works differently in highly intelligent people. Why that is, though, is the real $64,000 question."

What's stranger is that people of average intelligence who are creative have more NAA than those in the high IQ group.

In a paper published in April in the Journal of Neuroscience by Jung and six other researchers, the group defines creativity as having the "cognitive skills necessary to produce something both 'novel and useful.' "

The scientists used a standard IQ test and the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking to come up with the findings.

After looking at the scans, Jung and others noticed that NAA associated with creativity in the average group tends to be spread all over the brain's frontal lobe. In the high IQ group, NAA is more focused in very specific areas of the frontal lobe, Jung said.

"I've been speculating, and mind you it's just speculating, that in the average intelligence group, you need to hit more nodes in your brain to hunt that novel and unique idea," Jung said. "In the high IQ folks, and that's really a small percent of the population, it seems that the ideas they generate may be more novel to begin with, and so the mind tends to rely more on its knowledge base."

About 9 percent of the population have IQs of 120 or higher, he added.

Some critics argue that IQ tests are too vague to be useful, but Jung says the opposite is true.

"The IQ is a very precise scale of behavior that's over 100 years old," Jung said. "It's a reliable, precise measure of brain function, and a stable measure of brain capacity and problem solving. But it's limited in its ability to measure things like creativity or personality."

Measuring creativity, and comparing it to intelligence, is a much harder task, he said.

Mostly that's been done in the realm of psychology without any biological data to back it up, Jung said.

His research, which will include three papers on the subject over the next year, is trying to understand the biological aspects of creativity and its relationship with intelligence, he said.

When asked what his IQ is, Jung said he has no idea.

"I've never had my intelligence tested," Jung said. "The average IQ of doctors, lawyers, professors and such is about 120, though, and I've sort of estimated I'm in that range."

Jung said he couldn't take an IQ test now because he knows too much about them and it would skew the result.

Jung and the other scientists have finished writing the second paper on the subject, which is under peer review, he said.

That paper looks at the neural cortex and studies which areas are thicker or thinner in more creative people.

"With intelligence, usually more neurons are better, but with creativity it's this complexity of more in some areas and less in others," Jung said.

The third paper, which hasn't yet been written, will look at white matter in the brain and how that connects with creativity.

So what can you use all this information for? Unfortunately, probably not to make any of us smarter or more creative, Jung said.

"I think one of the take-home messages is probably that no, you can't eat more NAA and become more intelligent or creative," Jung said. "But we can use this to identify brain networks associated with creativity and study how they develop across a lifespan."

The work could also be used to better target educational strategies toward creative kids, he said.

When this study is finished, he hopes to start work on a new project looking at creative brains across a wide range of ages, with a goal of seeing how creativity and intelligence change over time, Jung said.

"We want to develop better measures of creativity so that we can understand it better," Jung said. "That flash of insight, that novel idea, it could come from many different things."

Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.