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Deleting Certain Gene Makes Mice Smarter
An anonymous reader writes "Deleting a certain gene in mice can make them smarter by unlocking a mysterious region of the brain considered to be relatively inflexible, scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have found. Mice with a disabled RGS14 gene are able to remember objects they'd explored and learn to navigate mazes better than regular mice, suggesting that RGS14's presence limits some forms of learning and memory."
I can haz turnkey upgrade for 50$?
Yeah, let's make lab mice smarter! What could possibly go wrong?
Error: password can't contain reverse spelling of ancient Chinese emperor
To call an inability to forget "smart" is a display of misunderstanding what learning actually is. Forgetting comes in many flavours, and while intuitively believe some forgetting may be related to "making more room", extinction learning is a rather finely-tuned mechanism of filtering relevant input from irrelevant input. Making that filter wider is hardly smart.
When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?
Unfortunately it's likely not. Evolution or God (your choice) rarely gives something for nothing. This gene is likely there for a reason. Disabling it will have some drawback, and it may not be an obvious connection.
I remember watching a show about genetics. They were talking about how humans have a genetic defect in a gene which governs the size of our jaw muscles. This defect means we bite with far less force than a chimp. But the show pointed out that a smaller jaw muscle, due to the physical attachments, allowed our skull to grow larger and with it our brain. Considering how well chimps are doing as compared to humans, I'd say the defect was actually a good thing.
I used to watch a documentary about this as a kid. Apparently this causes 50% of the mice to turn incredibly stupid, while the other 50% want to take over the world.
Actually, the immediate thought that occurred to me is that the gene is what disables photographic memory. The people that have it probably have a mangled version that doesn't do its job (isn't fully expressed). Since we have yet to find a common marker for the ability per se, we should try to find the people with the ability and check and compare theirs against the 'normal' version.
;-).
I personally don't have photographic memory although I am quite able to remember where I've heard or read something even after decades. Used to drive my fellow graduate students nuts (although my professors liked it since they had to never give chapter or page citations
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
One is a genius
The other's insane.
They're laboratory mice
Their genes have been spliced
They're dinky
They're Pinky and The Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain
Brain.
As I have contemplated what makes some people with above average intelligence different and how they can either tone it down or otherwise adjust comfortably into society, it occurs to me that this is just something that can't be "turned off" or "learned away."
Now that's just plain wrong.
In my youth, I lacked the discretion I gained with age. Thus, in my younger days, I spoke in a manner far exceeding the accepted capacities of my age, causing me to be looked upon as odd, unlikeable, or "the weird one."
As the years passed, I learned to "tone things down," suppressing my abilities in day to day interactions. I spoke simpler, broke down things that others considered complex to something understandable, and overall integrated as a more "normal" person. Note that I continued to get 90-100%, but because I was such an easygoing and average/fun person, my peers considered my intellect to be just natural and accepted rather than something to ostracize me on. Some considered it to be advantageous because, hey, get that guy on the project and BAM! A+!
So y'know, toning things down isn't impossible. My completely anecdotal evidence counters your anecdotal evidence. It's a learned skill just like any social skills. The only folks that probably can't tone it down are those with autism. For those who actually have Asperger's instead of self diagnosed, it's doable but more difficult to do without outside support.
I don't really consider "toning it down" to actually be dumbing yourself down. Speaking in a manner that isn't a pretentious a-hole is like speaking another language. Sure I can talk to the Chinese guy in English and demand he understand what I say, but that's not exactly a stellar way to present yourself. Learning to speak their language shows greater prowess on my part and puts them at ease too.
I gotta say though. I've been at it for way too long. Talking all educated like to my profs makes me stumble all over my words. Unless I effect an English accent. For some weird reason if I put an English accent on, I become less stumbly and more smooth.
And enough with the "I'm so smart! I'm an atheist!" shtick. It's been feeling masturbatory for a while.
thats the gene responsible for creating sex drive. Without worrying about sex the mice can concentrate on solving mazes. The Seinfeld hypothesis is right(well for mice anyway, if it were right for humans I would be the smartest man on the planet :P)
Monstar L
Evolution is causal. Just because a cause existed 50 million years ago, doesn't mean that it's there right now. I think that if we had the opportunity to *opt* for a larger (or more efficient) brain in exchange for higher energy consumption, most of us would do it. Humans have tamed the environment, and therefor we change our surroundings, rather than them changing us. We need to take the harness if we want to continue to improve ourselves, and the path of genetic modification seems the inevitable one.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
it only increases the ability to recognize objects and navigate mazes (visual memory), but hurts other brain activities (reflexes, creativity, thoughts). Navigating mazes isn't really a trait that mice evolved towards.
Surprising that noone noticed the reply titles "Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra"
I'm sorry, but you come off as very elitist; "I don't fit into society, but I'm way above average and everybody else is too stupid (to understand me). That's reasoning in order to maintain a certain position you clearly dislike, but giving purpose to it by telling yourself you're "above average".
"Intellingence" is a very wide subject and is sensitive to interpretation: A bushman wouldn't be able to "do the intelligent things you consider intelligent", but you wouldn't survive long in his world. It's relative, but you victimize yourself and place yourself on top of other in a egocentrical "I must be better".
Oh, woo me, the intelligent creature who suffers and is "always on". All those other stupid fucks sleep well and go about their meaningless lifes...
I'm sorry, but that doesn't take "above average intelligence". And by all means, by the age of 10 you do not have a "need for a god" in a western midclass world where you're shielded from life, certain life events later who will make you cry you wished there was something or someone who is godlike. At 10, you lack certain insight and experience. I'm not telling you I believe in a god, but at that age you lack experience.
TV isn't life, get out, live a bit.
They're not around because they don't like hanging out by an isolated guy who feels superiour in his self-explaining of his isolation.
Don't mix intelligence, a sense of superiority with your sexual preferences and religion. You're not discussing on topic, you're just being an egocentric shortminded selfentitling dumbfuck.
I'm sure you feel you have all figured out already as well :)
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
How about we separate social abilities from intellectual capacity. Some people are smart, and since they don't notice that it makes them different, they become outsiders. Others are both smart and very perceptive, so they "modulate" their behavior according to who they're talking to. Yet others make a conscious decision that if someone else doesn't approve of the way they are, then that someone is at fault, and not them.
And to continue the theme: I'm an atheist, intelligent, knowledgeable, and a snappy dresser!
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Keep in mind that it relates to the people that take the test. If you opt to take an IQ test (not everyone that takes the test opted to, obviously, but many do), there's a higher chance that you've been exposed to the kind of environment/education that incentives critical thinking, and as teaching methods improve and learning resources increase, these people will continue to do better on these tests. We're not talking about the average intelligence of the human species.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Well, I'd say it remains to be seen if it's an upgrade or a downgrade. Forgetting stuff or needing more than one case to form a rule are there for a reason. If you met someone "upgraded" who upon seeing a yellow cat automatically forms the full connexion that all cats are yellow, and/or is unable to break that connexion afterwards, the thought would probably be less "upgraded" and more like "poor idiot".
The general evolution of the brain has been towards smarter. Something which only needed a gene to break to be an upgrade would have been selected instantly if it were indeed an upgrade, as genes break all the time.
And for that matter, if that gene is a downgrade, how did it get selected in the first place. Survival of the fittest is still the name of the game, and in this case we're not even talking outside colours or anything else blamable on sexual selection. So, really, how did a whole extra gene that causes a downgrade get there, if it's a downgrade?
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they'll test it to heck and back before using it on humans, and all that. They're scientists and all that.
All I'm saying is just don't get your hopes too high yet. It may well turn out to be a literal implementation of the Flowers For Algernon story.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If you could counter these points and make the arguments that you did, then you can also observe that your reaction was visceral. It's entirely possible that he was being honest, and that on this site, at this hour, on a weekend, he could allow himself to be. I agree with part of what you've said (see what I posted above about social abilities), but your reaction "came off" as knee-jerk, and you could have argued back without assuming, or pointing out, that he seemed elitist. Also, this is Slashdot, who here *isn't* an elitist?? :)
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Bras have no genome. The line did not compute, and therefor was ignored by the parser. Your parser is either set to "verbose", or "display all warnings".
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Inhibiting the RGS14 gene product could be counter productive and in fact dangerous. While this strategy may enhance visual memory, it also may decrease hippocampal-based learning and memory: RGS14
Flowers for Algernon is a hard one. It's a good story, but there's not really a common quote, or stand-out line that you can quickly drop to reference it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
More evidence that high intelligence is pathological in a species and that nature actually works to suppress the development of intelligence beyond a certain rudimentary level. Look how long dinosaurs ruled the Earth without intelligence. Understand how long they had to develop it and did not. Humans somehow got off the reservation a couple of hundred thousand years ago. Not only did we develop vast intelligence, but we developed abilities that ANTICIPATED the need for them. Why did we develop the ability to drive 60, 70,-100 miles per hour or more while weaving in and out of traffic? Unless you are a cheetah, there is no need for that ability. Yet we as cavemen do that easily every day (at least the nut jobs among us do.) The abilities that humans evolved, evolved long before there was any need for them and they far exceeded the need for mere survival. Evolving the ability to evolve and evolving the ability to anticipate need and change for it ahead of time is not conforming to Darwin's theory of evolution as I know it. Something is not understood. This gene merely illustrates that once again.
E Proelio Veritas.
All humans have managed to do is delude themselves into believing that they are superior to every other species on the planet so that they can slaughter innocent animals in order to satisfy their taste buds, even when there are other sources of food to eat that don't suffer just as we do.
Yeah those damn insensitive humans oh and don't forget those wolves too I mean the forest is full of yummy berries and even mushrooms but all they want to do is eat those cute innocent deer.
Both statements are true. However, keep in mind that both would also apply to vaccination. We opt to alter our immune system in a certain way because, over a span of time, we found that it saves lives. There are always going to be anomalies, but that's why we have the ability to discern. We keep deadly plagues frozen even though they haven't been seen in the wild for decades, because these diseases may hold the key to solving problems in the future. Also, even if we do start altering our genes like changing clothes, not everyone is going to have the same taste -- our creative diversity will lead to the genetic one.
(yes, I'm being optimistic, we're probably going to design human weapons before we cure cancer, but it's going to take time anyway, so I'd prefer to think that we have a future rather than an apocalypse awaiting us)
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Also, most people DON'T seek to take the test. Their parents or school do. Most IQ tests are taken when people are young as a way of checking for disability or for advanced placement in the education system. Very Rarely does someone go to a Psychologist and say "I want to take an IQ test."
I was waiting for someone to make that point, I knew I missed it the moment I clicked 'Submit'.
Ok, but the fact that any person would choose to either take or administer the test is going to change the result. The school wants to improve its methods, the parents want to "improve" (guide, whatever) their children. Even if they don't change the result for the current batch of people being tested, it's going to change the result for the batch after that. One of the reasons that the test is there is so that we can draw conclusions (even if some choose to use it to brag), and part of these conclusions are going to be how to improve ourselves and/or our methods. Yes, I realize that the common mechanical reason for the test is selection/sorting, but it's also used "for good"...
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
"For such an 'intelligent' species, humans sure seem shortsighted"
You do realise that humans are like... completely different people, and the few can ruin things for the many? Like, if you find somebody with a 50 IQ, you can't determine from that that "humans are a stupid species"; the fact that there are people with IQ's of 50 doesn't discredit the work that people with IQ's of 150 do, just as rapists don't invalidate the work that the charitable and selfless do, and the fact that you paint a species of 6 billion with a single brush doesn't mean that there aren't people who can tell different people apart exist.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Also, there's not that much literature on RGS14 at this point (it doesn't seem to have come up in any of the GWAS -- wide scale genome association studies) for psychiatric disorders, but it has been identified in molecular studies as a target of P53 (a central cancer regulatory mechanism). It would not be out of the question for this knockout to have a significant increase in cancer risk (brain or elsewhere), but not have this detected in a small-scale study.
This will probably be modded into oblivion, but I am compelled to say this as simply and as honestly as I can. I can take a hit to my karma, and I understand that it may be off topic.
I was once an overthinker, still am sometimes. My mind was always moving contemplating everything, and I like it that way. Sometimes I wondered if my thoughts were out of control, but then pride set it and I would think that I was the smart one and that people who didn't think like me were too dumb to know better. I wanted to learn everything, so I studied science, but I was stuck with the realisation that what I had once thought of as "proof" didn't seem to hold up to scrutiny. So, I studied philosophy and even looked into metaphysics. I eventually read Descartes, and realised that the only undeniable statement is "I think, therefore I am". Everything else was based on assumption. I didn't want to admit it at the time, but that proved that all knowledge comes from faith in something. I then looked for a priori knowledge to see if there were something that we "just knew" to be true that I could start with, but began to get frustrated with all of the ridiculous suggestions.
The whole time, I was troubled. Although I saw the world as a beautiful place with more depth than the average person could comprehend, I was saddened that nobody else could see it the way that I did. Even though I believed I knew the reasons for everything, my life was still falling apart. I had swings of wild ecstasy followed by depression. I felt that the short depressions were worth the highs and that I had attained the best life could give me. I was wrong.
I would like to say that I found God, but the truth is that He found me. I thought that I knew Him because I had read the Bible and had been to church, but despite my own wisdom, I knew very little about Him. In the end, knowledge let me down as I realised that the world I had built was a fantasy world. When every body and everything, even my mind failed me, God lifted me up and showed me His way. Only then, could I really understand the Bible. Now, it is hard for me to understand how I ever ignored the truth in front of me. The scriptures are practical and have answered with ease all of the questions that I thought were beyond my grasp with logic that I cannot deny. I discovered that I didn't care anymore to understand me because it isn't about me.
I still get upset when some Christian tries to persuade somebody with faulty logic like Pascal's Wager, especially when there are so many better arguments. I particularly despise the televangelists whose knowledge of God is probably less than an atheist's. I can say that now my thoughts are tamed and more focused and productive. A lot of the old paradoxes that used to amuse me are like childish games now. Most of all, I am happy and at peace. There is still plenty for me to contemplate. The problem was that before, I was starting with a faulty foundation, so all of my learning was shaky. The foundation which has been given to me now is sturdy and sure. I have questioned it and tried it, and have found it unshakeable.
The Bible says that no temptation has taken you but that which is common to man. Don't think that you are alone in this. It may be a gene that makes it more prominent, but how we deal with it is up to each of us.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
10 FOR X = 0 TO 65535
20 POKE X, 0
30 NEXT X
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I would be very cautious with such statements. We did not get rid of diseases by growing immune to them or by developing a natural defense, and we are not the only things on this planet that adopt to changes. We are dependent on our culture and way of living to keep our environment livable. Hygiene standards, medical treatment and a steady supply with fresh drinking water and food prevent widespread plagues in the industrial nations. Let that break down only for a few weeks on a national scale and we will quickly see how "unnatural" our selection really is.
Though the big panic of the 80s and 90s has calmed down, HIV is still killing scores in the First World. $deity help us all if it ever finds a way to spread over the air.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
It's probably hardwired to run away from cats or something. Unlocked, it might make the mice more curious or cause them to pause to assess the situation rather than just running. A split second could mean the difference between getting eaten and not getting eaten, so the hard-wired runners don't get eaten as much. Mice don't have to be a whole lot smarter to live as mice, but they do have to be pretty good at getting away from cats.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Evolution isn't causal. It's, well, non-anti-causal, which isn't quite the same thing. That is to say, traits don't evolve in response to things, stuff without appropriate traits gets wiped out by those things. The difference is key. A trait doesn't persist because it's an advantage, it persists because it's not a sufficiently bad disadvantage, which is a weaker constraint. In the context of TFA, a gene that makes mice "dumber" doesn't mean that the gene provides a hidden advantage that has a better tradeoff, and it doesn't mean that being dumb provided a big advantage. All it means is that being dumb wasn't a disadvantage. Or, at least, wasn't a disadvantage strong enough to hurt the mice's reproductive chances. Due to statistics, and something called "neutral drift", an allele that is "neutral" in that it doesn't result in a significant disadvantage to reproduction, has a fair chance at taking over a population, over enough time. Not that it will happen a lot. But, "fair" chance here means it's not vanishingly small.
So, if a gene breaks comes into being that makes mice dumb, but being dumb doesn't stop them from finding food, evading predators, and having sex, then it's a neutral gene. So while not guaranteed to happen, there's nothing unusual about this gene becoming dominant, or in fact, part of the entire species. It certainly doesn't mean that it provides some sort of advantage as a trade-off. Genes that provide an advantage are much more likely to be passed on, until the entire species has it. But, ones that aren't strongly disadvantageous can be, too. All mammals have a gene that lets them make vitamin C. Some primates, including humans, have a broken version and so cannot produce vitamin C. That's because out ancestors ate mostly fruits and berries, which are full of vitamin C. So, when by chance we lost our ability to make it, it had no effect. This doesn't mean it provided a hidden disadvantage. It was simply not needed, so when it broke, natural selection did not kill animals who didn't have it.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Normal is a horrible thing to be. Statistically it's normal to be poor, and uneducated, living under a despotic regime. Even in western societies normal is uneducated, ugly and boring. By virtue of being born somewhere decent, we are all better off, and education only helps that. If I had to swap with anyone I went to high school with, I'd kill myself moments later.
Well, I guess I'm glad you found something that would work for you. Perhaps. A lot depends on things you *aren't* saying. E.g., do you feel that your way is the only way? That everyone else should follow it? If so, then I'm *sure* you gave up on philosophy WAY too soon.
I also found gods. Plural. (Actually, several different times I found a god, but it was different gods at different times.) I'm quite convinced that they are real, but also that they aren't a part of the external universe. Think of them as internal actualizations of Jungian Archetypes. They aren't purely mental, as they are built into the hardware (wetware?). And they are literally indescribable in language. I don't think they serialize, but even if they do communication through language depends upon similar experiences. The best one can do is attempt to evoke them in someone else. And even when this appears to be successful, it's impossible to be certain that what they experience traces back to the same thing you experienced. Only that it has certain descriptive elements in common.
And anyone who actually reads the bible and is still inspired by it is reading it through very strong filters. You don't want to hear what it sounds like to me.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.