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Abstract:
Despite being faced with literally millions of possibilities,
the best chess players manage to find appropriate solutions even
under limited thinking time. Here we elaborate on the mechanism
behind their superior performance using behavioural, physiological,
and neuroimaging evidence. Expert and novice chess players solved
a chess task where they had to count particular pieces, and control
non-chess tasks where they had to count all pieces on the board. While
experts could utilise their knowledge in the chess task which resulted
in a highly focused eye movement strategies and fast reaction times,
there were no differences between experts and novices in the control
non-chess task. Crucially, we find that the collateral sulci were not only
more activated in experts than in novices when they dealt with chess
tasks, but that also they were differently sensitive to the meaningfulness
of stimuli. When experts could use their knowledge in normal game
positions, the collateral sulci were more activated than when the use
was limited through randomization of pieces on the board. These
differences were absent in a non-chess control task, which indicates
that the collateral sulcus is the brain structure behind chess experts’
superior performance.
