Is Your Career Path Mapped in Your Gray Matter?
According to the court system, brain scans aren't quite yet ready to be used for lie detection, but a University of California Irvine School of Medicine scientist named Richard Haier believes that the answer to one's optimal career choice could be divined from peering inside his or her skull.
By comparing brain scans of 40 people (taken with magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI) with their results on a battery of tests that measured skills such as memory, spatial reasoning and analytical abilities, researchers were able to map mental faculties.
The conclusion, according to AOL News: "Gray matter offers an accurate indicator of how someone will score on tests of cognitive strengths and weaknesses, and also provide a more precise analysis than tests of general intelligence."
If your gray matter could one day tell you what career you'd be best suited for, perhaps it could also help some of chronically undecided college coeds figure out what they should study, as well.
Haier told the site LiveScience that the brain scan is unlikely to replace the trusty college counselor:
Nobody is suggesting brain scans would predict this so well you wouldn't need to talk to anybody, although this is a science-fiction possibility – but whether society would accept this is dubious. ... It's not a giant leap to believe the brain has something to do with mental strengths and weaknesses.
