Better Brain Wiring Linked To Family Genes

Third Position sends this excerpt from PhysOrg: "How well our brain functions is largely based on our family's genetic makeup, according to a University of Melbourne led study. The study ... provides the first evidence of a genetic effect on how 'cost-efficient' our brain network wiring is, shedding light on some of the brain's make up (abstract). Lead author Dr. Alex Fornito from the Neuropsychiatry Centre at the University of Melbourne said the findings have important implications for understanding why some people are better able to perform certain tasks than others and the genetic basis of mental illnesses and some neurological diseases."

Comments

Uh oh

[elrous0]

My family tree is a most wretched hive of scum and villainy. Guess that doesn't bode well for me.

That does explain why most of my cousins never left the trailer park, though. I was the anomaly who made it to college. Maybe my wiring shorted out.

Breaking News:

[Anonymous Coward]

Genes responsible for characteristics of living organism.

clearly

[Hazel Bergeron]

It is an uncomfortable truth, quite incompatible with any moral basis for meritocracy, that our fate is at worst sealed before we are born, and at best with the support of half a dozen early years of good nutrition and parenting. None of us really deserve our lot: the hardest worker will always be constrained by his mental limitations, while the genius can achieve very much with little effort.

Re:clearly

[h4rr4r]

How is it incompatible with a meritocracy and where would one find such a political structure anyway?

Your merits are yours if you earned them via hard work or good breeding. Still a far better system than we have today.

Re:clearly

[Hazel Bergeron]

If you possess merits which are shown to be the result of your breeding, can you say you earnt those merits? It's a fairly simple question.

Re:clearly

[Hazel Bergeron]

I went to a school full of wealthy trust fund babies. I was from one of the poorer families, having "earnt" some of my way via various scholarships (but my family was still certainly richer than average). I thus had no choice but to study and perform better than my schoolmates, who could hapily coast and fall into very comfortable positions in the adult world.

The majority of the wealthy may not be especially lazy, but they work no harder than the average working man.

Re:clearly

[h4rr4r]

So doing blow and hanging out in the Air national guard instead of fighting in Vietnam is hard work?

So do you benefit from said system or are you just one of its many useful idiots?

Re:clearly

[Hazel Bergeron]

Their merit was their ability to lead/dominate, and descendants justified their position by the same argument as your own: that not just each individual but the whole family "earnt" its position by good breeding.

Re:clearly

[Hazel Bergeron]

Arguments which suggest man has a collective aim to "evolve" through the lifting up of its supermen are as ugly today as they've been throughout C20.

Re:clearly

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me, what of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and pretty much any successful actor?

Unethical business practices plus wealth advantages (family had connections which got him computer time in an era where such things were incredibly expensive), unethical business practices (had absolutely no problem with lying and cheating people in order to maximize his profits, which is a beneficial trait to get ahead, but a crappy trait for a human being), were born physically attractive to the general public (or are you implying that successful actors are good actors? More often then not they are recruited from modeling careers and have absolutely no talent).

Did Steve Jobs, John Carmack or The Beatles work hard enough for you?

No (he's essentially the Zuckerberg of his generation. Awesome salesman because he has no problems with lying and cheating. Woz did the all the hard work), yes, and kind of. Carmack definitely worked hard, is incredibly talented, and definitely deserved his success, but he was also lucky in that he got into the right business at the right time (and yes, partly because he was smart and talented enough to recognize the opportunity and go for it). You can't just go repeat the process and get rich, luck is a large part of it, but Carmack is the best example in your list. The Beatles had merit, but it was raw talent, not so much lots of hard work. Especially later in their careers (when they were making their best songs), they spent most of their time stoned. They were just good regardless. Lennon and McCarthy were well-known for being able to write an album over a weekend, then take 1-3 days to do the recording. Frankly, I'm ok with that, results are more important than how much work you had to put into it (I don't care if you worked a year on something that is absolute crap, I'll take the awesome work by the dude who did it in 30 minutes instead). That said, it's a perfect example of how 'hard work' doesn't get you as far as just that with which you were lucky enough to be born with.

Any successful person you know of outside of political spheres probably worked a lot of loooong nights for a looooong time.

Not based on your examples.

It sounds to me like you are resentful of the rich kids who stole your date to the school dance with the cars they didn't pay for.

Yeah, so their trust funds give them an advantage even in passing their genes forward, not just in their careers, huh? How is that an argument for the merits of working hard?

Re:clearly

[StikyPad]

You obviously don't know many wealthy people. Hard work is inversely proportional to pay. The hardest work is in fields under the hot sun. They get paid the least. Next is janitorial work, fast food, etc. They get paid slightly more. Then there's semi-professionals, professionals, managers, supervisors, etc. The higher it goes, the less work is involved (by any definition of the word work that includes more than just being present).

Not that I have a problem with it, especially since I'm not one of the people working the hardest for the least pay, but neither will I pretend that I work harder than they do.

Re:clearly

[Hazel Bergeron]

My fiction does not cost millions, nor is it as boring as a wedding.

Lots of people like Hollywood movies, and I'm quite certain that many would find your fiction more boring than a wedding.

Who supports taking from most and giving to the already wealthy?

A good deal of royalists, clearly. In return the Royals entertain the country/world in various ways and provide a perceived rock of stability. If you like, think of it as a tradition/fantasy tax - the Queen and her close relations have more than enough money to retire into obscurity, but the country chooses to pay them to play on.

There was also something more interesting in the whole aristocracy via the recently deprecated hereditary peer system: a House which sat partly apolitically, often more keen than the ephemeral Commons to uphold traditional aspects of British freedom. Blair's machine of civil liberty erosion had been in no small measure lubricated by the House of Lords Act 1999, which allowed him to stoke this second house with political cronies and reduce the chance of absurd new legislation being bounced back for review. You may argue that Britain should instead have an ultimate defence in the form of its own written Constitution like the USA, but all written documents are interpreted by men and the traditional Lords had a unique breed(!) of men who did not need to curry political favour.

I have no problem with helping the poor, I have a problem with using money that could help the poor to keep some jerks in castles and caviar until the end of time.

That's perfectly reasonable. But it is important to see where the other side is coming from, no matter how absurd you consider it at first glance.

Re:clearly

[CFTM]

I don't think you know that much about the Beatles good sir, but their time in Hamburg, at least to me, constitutes prolonged work perfecting their craft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_in_Hamburg

There are no prodigies, some people just reach 10,000 hours doing a single task faster than others. And clearly some people retain a higher level of mastery in those 10,000 hours but when we witness mastery there is 10,000 hours behind it.

And

Re:clearly

[oliverthered]

unfortunately those very same morons get to say who the morons are.

Maybe it's just a natural part of evolution that a species splits by one part of it being repulsed by the other.

Does Gold posses any merits?

Re:clearly

[osgeek]

You'll have to spend a lot more time discussing the meaning of the word "moral", I guess. Meritocracy is the only moral basis for a society, prima facie.

To me, it's immoral for a society to try to equalize outcomes for all individuals when it's obvious that they have wildly different performance and productivity levels that should be encouraged through reward. It doesn't really matter whether these level differences are the result of nature or nurture.

Clearing up a myth and a misinterpretation

[Myji Humoz]

The only novel contribution the article has to scientific understanding seems to be this gem:

"We found that people differed greatly in terms of how cost-efficient the functioning of their brain networks were, and that over half of these differences could be explained by genes,” said Dr. Fornito.

Please note that the study "compared the brain scans of 38 identical and 26 non-identical twins from the Australian Twin Registry." That is to say, each twin is compared against the other, but not against unrelated people. These individuals had highly similar genetic makeups and likely very similar backgrounds/family environments.

The statement that half of these differences could be explained by genes is EXTREMELY misleading. It implies to the casual reader that half of the brain's efficiency is linked to genes. IT IS NOT THE CASE.

Lets use a real life example.
Couple A goes shopping. The man always buys a suit for $1000. The woman buys a hat for $10 half the time, but nothing at other times.
Couple B goes shopping. The man always buys a suit for $1000. The woman buys a hat for $10 every time.

Average cost of couple A: $1005. Average cost of couple B: $1010

The difference is $5, and all of it is driven by the behavior of the woman in couple A. However, it's blatantly obvious that the women in the couples don't account for anything close to a significant portion of the cost. It's just like how if 90% of the variance in height is explained by genes, it doesn't mean that genes control 90% of your height.

TLDR VERSION: Just because half the difference can be explained by genes doesn't mean that genes account for 50% of the brain efficiency. There is no substitute for raw talent nurtured by a stimulating and engaging environment.

Re:Clearing up a myth and a misinterpretation

[vlm]

The woman buys ... nothing ...

Now you're confusing us with unrealistic examples.

TLDR:

Intelligence = (0.5) (genetics) + (everything else)

It seems the coefficient of 0.5 has been proven, but Myji Humoz claims the numerical value of (everything else) >> (genetics)

I can see

[AlfaMike]

this being used as a justification by bigots.