A brain scan will help you choose a profession.

Mental tests are widely used for the vocational guidance of young people, usually schoolchildren. Tests usually test memory, mental thinking, abstract / verbal thinking and other characteristics. Based on these data, a specialist can make recommendations in which field of activity a teenager can theoretically find a suitable job.

Everything is good, but such tests take too much time and are not very accurate. Scientists from the University of California argue that they were able to develop a technique that in the future will allow the majority of such tests to be replaced by a single brain scan session.

They compared the test results of 40 people with a map of the distribution of gray matter in the brain of each of them, after which they launched a statistical analysis procedure - and found a clear relationship for each of the eight tests. The results of the work published in the journal BMC Research Notes ( PDF ), the document indicates the exact coordinates of the brain areas that are responsible for a particular ability.

If further experiments confirm the first calculations, then in the future, career guidance for people can be largely automated, and MRI scans will be attached to a professional resume.