SCIENTIFIC CORRESPONDENCE

Brain activity in chess playing along the lateral, the inferior, and the
medial aspects of the left temporal lobe,
the latter being mainly due to activation of
SIR - There is widespread interest in required the subject to process figure- the left hippocampus. We suggest that the
identifying the topography of the neural ground separation and discriminate be- retrieval of move sequences paired with a
networks subserving problem solving tween black and white chess pieces. The particular chess piece was responsible for
in humans. One potentially fruitful extra visual analysis required by the spa- the hippocampus and temporal lobe
approach is to use functional neuro- tial discrimination condition explains the activation 6 . A small peak of activation was
imaging techniques in conjunction with dorsal pathway activity. Activity in area 7 also found in the inferior part of the
cognitive tasks 1 . Chess is an example of (both in the superior parietal lobule and in post-central gyrus as well as in the cerebel-
such a task 2 , and we have administered the medial superior parietal cortex) has lum, which has recently been implicated in
chess problems in con- cognitive processing 7 .
junction with rt 50]water- In the subtraction of rule
positron emission tomogra- retrieval from checkmate
phy (PET) to identify the the differential activity was
neural network(s) activated confined to two large areas,
in this process 3 . the junction between the
The stimuli for all the task occipital and the parietal
conditions were black-and- lobe, and the frontal lobe.
white chess diagrams pre- We attribute the bilateral
sented on a computer focus of activation we re-
screen. To isolate brain corded at the occipito-
activation changes related parietal junction (areas 7,
to the use of specific cogni- 18 and 19) to the act of
tive processes, we devised generating sequential board
four conditions arranged in images and to attentional
a subtractive hierarchy: (1) shifts across the images.
black/white discrimination, Activation recorded in the
in which subjects had to frontal eye fields (area 8)
Cerebral regions associated with cognitive components resulting from
indicate whether or not subtraction between the four tasks. PET images were reconstructed by
might be associated with an
there were chessmen of a bilinear interpolation in the axial (z) dimension to produce transaxial increase in extraocular
given colour on the board; planes. Data were displayed in a 128x128x43 voxel matrix, each voxel movements during the in-
(2) spatial discrimination, in having similar dimensions in each of the three axes. Any roll and/or yaw stantiation of various end-
which an X was displayed in misalignment between scans was corrected based on visual inspection game strategies. We also
one of the board's squares independently by P.N. and P.P. For each comparison an image of the pixel found increased activity in
and subjects had to identify t-va lues was created, constituting the statistical parametric map (SPM{ t}). two prefrontal regions, one
the colour of the chessman The omnibus significance of these t-statistical parametric maps was located in the left orbito-
assessed by comparing the expected and observed number of pixels above
closest to the X; (3) rule frontal cortex, and the
a significance threshold of P=0.001 (ref. 9). Only SPMs that were
retrieval, in which subjects significant in the omnibus sense (at P<0.001) are reported. To illustrate second in the right pre-
analysed a simple, single the distribution of the main sites of activation, significant areas of frontal cortex. We believe
move, in responding to activation for each subtraction condition are rendered on the lateral and that these two regions of
questions like "can the (when appropriate) the medial surface of the brain used in ref. 10. activation subserve mana-
white knight capture a black gerial knowledge required
rook?"; and (4) checkmate judgement, in been repeatedly associated with spatial for the planning and sequential execution
which the subjects had to determine vision and with shifting spatial attention. of endgame strategies8 .
whether the player with a given colour We also found activation in a region of the We have demonstrated that solving
could checkmate in one move. All left superior premotor cortex (superior a complex problem calls for the activity
answers were indicated by pressing re- area 6) which previous studies suggested of a network of several interrelated, but.
sponse keys labelled yes or no. Ten right- was related to preparing a response to a functionally distinct, cerebral areas. The
handed males who had played chess for selected peripheral location. use of neuroimaging techniques such as
more than 4 years and were regularly Subtraction of the spatial discrimina- PET, carefully coupled with distinctive
participating in chess tournaments volun- tion condition from the rule retrieval information-processing demands, can
teered for this study. condition yielded several foci located help disentangle the role of each of these
When the results of the black/white areas in human problem-solving activity.
discrimination condition were subtracted 1. Roland. P. E. & Friberg, L.J. Neurophysiof. 53,1219-- Paolo Nichelli*
from the spatial discrimination condition, 1243 (1985). Jordan Grafman t
2. Charness. N. in Towards a General Theory of Expertise:
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analyses) at the parieto-occipital lobe 3. Raichle, M. E. in Handbook of Physiology, Section 1: The John C. Carton
Nervous System 5. 643--6 7 4 (198 7).
junction (areas 7 and 19), at the left 4. Desimone. R. &Ungerleider, L. G. in Handbook of Robert Miletich
middle temporal gyrus, and at the left Neuropsychofogy(eds Boiler. F. &Grafman,J.) 267-299 Cognitive Neuroscience Section,
(Elsevier. Amsterdam,1990).
superior premotor cortex. Extrastriate 5. Haxby, J. V. eta!. Proc. natn. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 88,
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The black/white discrimination task only the Human Bram (Thieme, Stuttgart, 1988). t Author for correspondence.

NATURE · VOL369 · 19MAY 1994 191

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