How genes affect our lives

Фото: Depositphotos

Psychogenetic Robert Plomin spoke about the role of genes and education in the formation of personality and ability to foreign languages ​​in twins.

Psychogenetics seeks genetic prerequisites for differences between people. On 99%, our DNA is the same, people are almost identical, but 1%, which we differ by, is of great importance. Many researchers are not interested in individual differences, they raise questions about the human species as a whole. But psychogenetics raise questions about why some children have violations, the newspaper writes. PostScience.

Nature vs education

For a hundred years, psychologists have assumed that the only significant factor in explaining differences between people is the environment, especially the environment created by the parents in the first few years of a child’s life. This opinion prevailed from the works of Freud and beyond. But with the help of psychogenetics, we found that the difference in human DNA explains almost half of the differences between them. Genetics is not just “important” - it plays a huge role in almost all areas of psychology: mental health, diseases, cognitive abilities, personal development, or school achievements.

For a long time, people believed that our personality was completely conditioned by upbringing. Nature versus environment is an old debatable question in psychology. Psychogenetics have shown that nature (genes) is very important. The idea itself dates back to the beginning of the last century, when the first psychogenetic techniques were developed: the twin method and studies of families with foster children.

Twin studies

About one percent of all children born in the world are twins, and a third of them are identical twins. They are called monozygotic because they develop from one fertilized egg - a zygote. They are like clones of each other, they have the same DNA. Another type of twins (two-thirds of the total) are called dizygotic: they look like other siblings but developed at the same time in the same womb. The twin method is to compare these two groups. If a trait, such as musical ability, is dictated by genetics, the inevitable assumption is that identical twins are more similar to each other than non-identical twins. This is a kind of biological experiment.

Scheme of the formation of twins: on the left - monozygous or identical (eng. Monozygotic), on the right - dizygotic or different (eng. Dizygotic). Designations on the diagram: Sperm - spermatozoon, Egg - egg cell, Shared placenta - common placenta (the only one), Separate placentas - different placentas. Photo: wikipedia.org

What did the twin method give us? The 15 study of millions of twins in four thousand papers showed that everything is inherited - not only psychological traits, but also physiology (for example, length and density of bones). All individual differences in biology and behavior are mainly due to differences in DNA.

Method of adoptive children

If the study of twins is a kind of biological experiment, then the study of families with foster children is a social experiment.

Both genes and upbringing are family related. For a long time, psychologists knew that schizophrenia is a family disease. Great, they said, it's all about the environment, parents developed schizophrenia in their children. But psychologists did not take into account the likelihood that genetics is important. Genetic material is inherited: parents and children are genetically similar to 50%.

Let's look at biological and adoptive parents. Children were adopted after birth, biological parents passed on their genes to them, but did not participate in their upbringing. Children grow up in a foster family and are associated with foster parents through the setting. Such research is a powerful tool for testing the importance of genetics. The method predicts that the similarity between biological parents and their children, with whom they do not live in the same environment, allows you to test the influence of genetics. Similarly, how much children are like their adoptive parents is a test of how much children are affected by their upbringing.

The twin method and the method of adopted children have shown the key role of genetics in the formation of man. From the idea that nothing is inherited, we moved on to the idea that everything is inherited. Now both methods are used to solve more interesting questions.

How early is the influence of genes?

There is a constant interaction between genetics and the environment. Life events like financial crises, problems in relationships, quarrels, job losses are not events that passively occur to you (as if you have nothing to do with them). This is what you do with the environment. It connects genetics. Genes work through their correlation with the outside world.

For example, I study cognitive abilities. The most inherited of the hundreds of indicators of cognitive abilities is the vocabulary. This refers to individual differences: some people have a large vocabulary, some do not. You do not inherit words, they are not embedded in your DNA, including due to the fact that there are many different languages ​​in the world, but the tendency to use a language, to hear language subtleties, is inherited. My granddaughter always wants to know all the nuances: why does a word mean exactly that? And my grandson says: “But what a difference, you understand what I mean!” - and this is where the genes begin to work. You start using the world around you, you communicate with people who think in the same way as you. My granddaughter will communicate with other children who read books and who like intellectual conversations. This is a good example of how genetics has changed our approach to how we conceptualize the concept of the environment.

Genetic background of language ability

The development of language skills is actively studied. Children differ greatly in how early they learn to speak, how their language skills develop throughout life (how easy it is for them to speak fluently) and vocabulary. Einstein, for example, did not speak until the age of three.

The diagram shows the influence of genes on the psychological, emotional characteristics of the individual. In the diagram: monozygous twins (blue), dizygotic twins (red) and adopted brothers and sisters (gray). Photo: wikipedia.org

What traits do we inherit?

A real transformation has taken place in science: until now, people were interested only in the question of whether genes are important, and if so, how much. The answer to this question in all its aspects has already been found, although some people still do not accept it. Genetics is not just important, it is fundamental to almost all areas of psychology. It is no longer interesting to say “this trait is inherited,” because everything is inherited.

We go deeper and ask questions about development, about character traits. For example, in the field of psychopathology and mental illness there are many different diagnoses. It turns out that their genetic effects are about the same, that is, the same genes cause many of the “different” disorders.

Another area of ​​research is the interaction between genes and the environment. If nature and rearing are important - and this is so, because genetics does not explain all the differences, it usually explains about half, - many researchers are interested in finding out how they work together: they want to identify the interaction, correlation and interaction between genes and the world and how it affects human development.

The key idea is to go ahead and say: "Find the genes that are responsible for this." Everything is inherited, so let's find specific genes. If you can find genes, you can do a lot more in your area of ​​research, and in the area of ​​solving specific problems. DNA is the best tool for predicting problems that we have, and forecasting will allow us to intervene in time to prevent them. This is the direction in which all medicine is moving.

For example, instead of waiting for a person to become an alcoholic and then trying to cure him (or wait until someone earns obesity and then try to cure him), it might be possible to predict problems to prevent them from occurring. This is important both for individuals and for society as a whole.

We have already reached a turning point where we begin to connect various features and specific genes. This will allow us to make individual predictions about genetic risks and resilience, vulnerabilities and benefits, which over time will allow us to predict problems and begin to prevent them.

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