It may take years of hard work to become a chess grandmaster, but it gives a real boost to the brain - for working out chess problems, at least. It seems expert chess players use both sides of their brain to process chess tasks, rather than just one。

　要成為國際象棋大師，數載勤學苦練少不了，然而痛苦必定有回報，研究發現，象棋大師們頭腦發達，可以同時動用兩側大腦來解開棋局。

Merim Bilalic at the University of Tübingen in Germany used fMRI to scan the brains of eight international chess players and eight novices while they identified either geometrical shapes or whether the pieces on a chess board were in a check situation. The expert players were quicker at solving the chess problem, activating areas on both sides of their brains as they did so. The novices used just the left side。

　　德國蒂賓根大學的梅利姆·畢拉利克讓八位國際象棋大師和八位入門新手識別幾何圖形或圍解將死棋局，同時利用功能核磁共振成像設備分別對他們的大腦進行掃描。較之僅用左腦思考的新手，大師們能夠雙腦并用，破局速度也更快。

Bilalic had expected the expert players to use a faster version of the processing mechanism used by novices. "But once the usual brain structures were engaged, the experts utilized additional complementary structures in the other half, to execute processes in parallel," he says。

　　畢拉利克預期大師比新手的思維速度更快，但掃描結果顯示“大師們左側的腦部結構一活動，對應的右側大腦就會同時開始運作，二者雙管齊下”。

　　This parallel processing didn't occur when the expert players carried out the geometry task, suggesting that it is limited to practised skills. "It shows that there really is no short cut to expertise," says Bilalic。

　　然而在識別幾何圖形時，這種雙腦并用的現象就會消失，這也意味著勤學苦練才能頭腦發達。畢拉利克說：“此項研究說明成功確實無捷徑”。