As a young man, Ognjen Amidzic, now a neuroscientist who runs a private research lab in Switzerland, watched his life's ambition—to become a professional chess player—slip out of reach. So he developed a simple test (the patent on which is pending) that he's convinced will reveal whether a child is destined for chess glory or would be better off packing up his pawns. "Chess is a great hobby for children," he says. "I just don't want people to waste their lives training for something they won't be able to do."
To take the test, a child plays one game against a computer while his brain is scanned to see whether he primarily uses his frontal and parietal cortices (the centers that are activated more when grandmasters play chess) or his medial temporal lobe (the center where the most activity takes place within trained amateurs' brains, according to Amidzic's research). Amidzic believes that this proportion is genetically predetermined and doesn't change much with practice. He uses this ratio to predict the exact chess rating at which a child will eventually peak.
