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."

Comments

Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a brain.

[mr_mischief]

I can haz turnkey upgrade for 50$?

Yeah!

[SigILL]

Yeah, let's make lab mice smarter! What could possibly go wrong?

Inability to forget is hardly smart

[Filip22012005]

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.

Re:Inability to forget is hardly smart

[zes]

Exactly. My first thought was savant. There seems to me to be a balance between how many details one remembers and how well one can create abstractions. People who are very good at abstract thinking are so because they throw away irrelevant details and remember the bigger picture. Their pattern matching has gone up a level if you will.

Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra

[berzerke]

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.

Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Turns out

[antifoidulus]

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)

Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra

[derGoldstein]

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.

Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra

[ZeroExistenZ]

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

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".

Perhaps I am simply too contemplative, but that is something I simply cannot turn off except when I am sleeping. (and even then... is it really off?)

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...

By the age of 10, my contemplative nature led me to conclude there can be no God in the form it is currently being pushed on us

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.

(well, exposure to PBS and the clear existence of "childhood myths" such as santa claus and the easter bunny also helped in the process to be sure.)

TV isn't life, get out, live a bit.

But where does it all come from and why aren't other people like this?

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.

And like many homosexual people, I wouldn't care to change it even if I could

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 :)

Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra

[derGoldstein]

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!

Re:Remains to be seen if it's an upgrade

[Moraelin]

Well, at least theoretically it's conceivable that it would be possible to do a better job with the regulating proteins than nature did. After all, nature itself did an increasingly better job by trial and error, and it would be presumptuous to presume that whatever we got is nothing short of absolute, unsurpassable perfection. So, yes, it's conceivable that one day someone would encode a better protein than that gene does.

I'm not sure if we're at that point, yet, though. We know how to copy genes and we know how to break genes, but I don't think anyone really knows how to make a better one, or really even design one that only causes the effect to differ by a small amount.

We're essentially like a clock maker who knows how to copy a cog or lever from another clock, or how to break one, but even designing a 10% smaller cog is well outside the realm of what he knows how to do. That's really the state of genetic engineering nowadays. Fortunately, we have billions of clocks and trillions of cogs to copy around us, which is why we can still do some useful stuff. But designing a new one is really still right out.

So, yeah, it could happen. Given enough time, it probably _will_ happen. But if it needs to be more complicated than breaking or deleting or replacing that gene with one from a existing organism, I'm not holding my breath that it will happen in my lifetime.

Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra

[x2A]

"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.

Re:Cool, it's like Intel Upgrade Service for a bra

[canajin56]

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.