Intelligence genes by Claudia Sonea

The Institute of Psychiatry in London has just made public a new study they made on Intelligence genes. It will be published on the British weekly New Scientist as the Saturday's issue. The subject is very controversial and like always the intelligence genes are a subject of research, others like Harvard University's Howard Gardner and Steven Jay Gould have also approached it. As a research institution dedicated to discovering what causes mental health problems and diseases of the brain, the Institute of Psychiatry in London aims to help identify new treatments for them and ways to prevent them in the first place. The research the Institute has done is about the intelligence as a function of the way the brain is put together. 7,000 seven-year-olds were used for the study by scoring verbal and non-verbal reasoning tests in order to obtain the intelligence level. Also DNA samples from the children were took to identify genetic differences between the high and low scorers. According to the researcher that led the study, Robert Plomin of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, 37 variants in six genes were identified as playing an important part in differences in intelligence. Nevertheless, the study was not that easy to be conducted due to the fact that the individual effects of intelligence genes were barely detectable. Moreover, all put together they count only as one percent of the variation in intelligence between individuals. In related to previous studies made on twins and adopted children that suggest the variation of intelligence is due to upbringing and social factors, while others say that intelligence is inherited, this one shows that the genetic link to intelligence is extremely elusive. New York University psychologist Gary Marcus told the publication the only thing relevant is that in order to build a human brain; you need thousands of genes to work together. If you are interested, don't waste time and read the article for more details. Enjoy!

related story: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20071128/tsc-science-biotech-genes-intelligence-c2ff8aa_1.html

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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