Tiny gene change affects brain size, IQ: scientists

[FarCenter]

An international team of scientists said Sunday the largest brain study of its kind had found a gene linked to intelligence, a small piece in the puzzle as to why some people are smarter than others.

A variant of this gene "can tilt the scales in favour of a higher intelligence", study leader Paul Thompson told AFP, stressing though that genetic blessings were not the only factor in brainpower.

Searching for a genetic explanation for brain disease, the scientists stumbled upon a minute variant in a gene called HMGA2 among people who had larger brains and scored higher on standardised IQ tests.

Thompson dubbed it "an intelligence gene" and said it was likely that many more such genes were yet to be discovered.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120415-tiny-gene-change-affects-brain-size-iq-scientists

[libinnyandia]

1. it would be interesting to compare Democrats' brains to Republicans".

[lonestarnot]

3. Impossible.

[Fumesucker]

2. It's hard to imagine how intelligence could have evolved in the first place..

If there were no genes that effected intelligence..

[Brother Buzz]

4. Katherine Pollard and colleagues at the University of California Santa Cruz suggests...

that the fast-changing gene may help explain the dramatic expansion of this part of the brain during the evolution of humans. UC Santa Cruz was the prestigious institution that first mapped the entire human genome .

[saras]

6. We've got a long ways to go...

We'll find genes that affect bits of brain for a while, and generate all kinds of dumb theories about how everything is explained by these bits. And then we'll start noticing that multiple bits make up systems, and without the rest of a system a bit isn't as valuable, and there'll be a whole new level of complexity to the theories... and so on. Hopefully we won't do behaviorism again.

And then there's the question of whether any harmful effects are also associated with the gene. It would be a drag to exterminate some gene like this because it is also partially responsible for some genetic "disease".