title: Mother's but not father's education predicts general fluid intelligence in emerging adulthood: Behavioral and neuroanatomical evidence.
abstract: Lower parental education impairs cognitive abilities of their offspring such as general fluid intelligence dependent on the prefrontal cortex (PFC), but the independent contribution of mother's and father's education is unknown. We used an individual difference approach to test whether mother's and father's education independently affected general fluid intelligence in emerging adulthood at both the behavioral and neural level. Behaviorally, mother's but not father's education accounted for unique variance in general fluid intelligence in emerging adulthood (assessed by the Raven's advanced progressive matrices). Neurally, the whole-brain correlation analysis revealed that the regional gray matter volume (rGMV) in the medial PFC was related to both mother's education and general fluid intelligence but not father's education. Furthermore, after controlling for mother's education, the association between general fluid intelligence and the rGMV in medial PFC was no longer significant, indicating that mother's education plays an important role in influencing the structure of the medial PFC associated with general fluid intelligence. Taken together, our study provides the first behavioral and neural evidence that mother's education is a more important determinant of general cognitive ability in emerging adulthood than father's education.
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.|Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors: Feng
authors: F
authors: Kong
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.|Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors: Zhencai
authors: Z
authors: Chen
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.|Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors: Song
authors: S
authors: Xue
authors: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.|Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors: Xu
authors: X
authors: Wang
authors: School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors: Jia
authors: J
authors: Liu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004522:Educational Status; D005220:Fathers / Q000193:education*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers / Q000193:education*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: father's education; intelligence; mother's education; prefrontal cortex; voxel-based morphometry