Gene Variant Can Cause Nattering Nabobs of Negativity

Freshly Exhumed writes "Researchers from the University of British Columbia, Cornell University and Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health report in the journal Psychological Science [abstract; press release] that a gene variant can cause individuals to perceive the negative side of every situation. UBC Prof. Rebecca Todd said the ADRA2b deletion variant influences not only emotional memory, which was previously known, but also amplifies a person's real-time perception of events, for better or for worse. 'Some individuals are predisposed to see the world more darkly than others,' Todd said. 'What we found is that a previously known genetic variation causes some individuals to perceive the world more vividly than others and, particularly, negative aspects of the world.'"

Comments

Here come the internet attention whores

[Mr. Freeman]

This is going to be the newest thing that every special little snowflake on the internet self-diagnoses with in order to get some attention. It's the next OCD.

Re:Here come the internet attention whores

[Black Parrot]

I had it first!

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Samantha Wright]

Not a gene—just a mutation. Perplexingly, there is a drug that blocks the receptor in question, but it's for treating sexual dysfunction. Possibly a goldmine for witty remarks.

Re:At first blush...

[Ambassador Kosh]

I like identifying this stuff, quantifying it and maybe even finding temporary ways to control how it works. However I would not recommend actually permanently changing it.

It is strange because some of this research I don't really want reported to the general public because they don't have the scientific understanding for it but they are willing to leap to an idea and demand it be done. There are some genes that seem likely to be tied to male homosexuality however those same genes are also tied to female fertility. I have seen some people talking about how we should "cure" homosexuals by fixing that gene. What I worry about is that a group could get enough power to try and actually do that. The problem is that we could also end up sterilizing people treated which could be catastrophically bad.

I just see so many people as misusing research to further their own ideological ends. We need to do this research, we need to understand why stuff happens. We need to know why as a mother has more male children epigenetic markers get set on further male children to change gene expression. There is a LOT we can learn from that. I just don't want to see that research abused. I wish we could get rid of this idiotic idea of XX=female, XY = male. Gender and sex are NOT even close to that simple.

Re:Theres a gene for everything now

[Samantha Wright]

Well, no, obviously not; even at the most pessimistic extreme, you'd have to convince a lot of cynics just like yourself that thinking negatively is necessarily a bad thing and that they should shell out biggish bucks to fix it. That's not exactly going to happen, now is it? :)

Realistically, the utility of understanding this gene variant and producing pharmaceutical remedies is in helping people with clinical depression break down barriers—people so cynical and miserable that they can't function normally. Yohimbine is currently prescribed to people already on antidepressants, though, so I would tend to guess it either doesn't address the effects of the mutation, or fixing it doesn't affect much once you're already on an SSRI.

That all being said, I do agree with you that cynicism can have its advantages—I have an ongoing hypothesis that childhood isolation and depression encourage the development of independent reasoning skills and hence improve intelligence, although it's a bit untestable still. I was inclined to proposition earlier that perhaps this allele has a meaningful relationship with the development of Western civilization, but that line of inquest gets very Social-Darwinist-sounding very quickly, and isn't exactly a great conversation piece. The reason for this is that as many as 50% of Caucasians are believed to have this allele (much more than other populations), so either it's completely meaningless in the long term and just happened by chance, or it conferred some relevant advantage.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[icebike]

They'll go away.

Exactly, realists are the coal mine canaries of society: "but also amplifies a person's real-time perception of events".
Maybe instead of calling people who point out negative aspect of grandiose plans Debbie Downers, and nabobs of negatively, it would make more sense to realize that when there are a significant number of people saying "hold on there", that just possibly society is getting ahead of itself and rushing head long down yet another repetitive boondoggle that has failed before.

Re:At first blush...

[muridae]

I wish we could get rid of this idiotic idea of XX=female, XY = male. Gender and sex are NOT even close to that simple.

It would be nice if people could understand that. Or at least understand that XY genotypes can be born expressing a female phenotype, and vice versa; but getting the general populace to believe anything that goes against what they were taught in school is very tough to do. "If it's that complicated, why don't they teach that?" I've actually heard that, as if a high school advance placement A&P or an on level biology course could get through all of that in less than one term. Sure, it makes Punnett squares easy to understand and relate to personal knowledge, but it's so far from right that it needs to just be tossed out of high school classes completely. "23X0, XXY, XYY, AIS, Turner's Syndrome, and lots of other combinations just make teaching simple 2 gene human expression too difficult. There are so many possible mutations of the genes involved, too many ways for multiple genes to combine like discussed about Down's Syndrome, and too many external genes that also influence human sex and gender (and expression of both and sexuality as well) for it to ever be discussed in the simplified manner needed at the high school level."

Unfortunately, even spelling it out in mostly small words like that doesn't often work. Even getting them to understand that X and Y were picked not because of the shape of the chromosome, which all look like an X during mitosis, but because they were common 'unknowns' in math. When biologists need a new set, they continued with W and Z. "Wiki doesn't say that," results in my face meeting the nearest wall repeatedly, because a facepalm just isn't a strong enough reaction.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[lxs]

I'm sorry if that post came over as flippant, because depression is a problem I do take seriously. At least it got your attention.

First off, the judgment of terrible is yours, not mine. I merely stated that it's a bloody miracle that a bunch of monkeys has figured out farming, poetry and mathematics and that we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves for not being perfect rational creatures living in Star Trek Utopia.

Secondly, making happiness a habit does work in practice, and has done for centuries. Buddhism and Stoicism have long traditions in this kind of thought. There is that line from Hamlet: There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.

This isn't a quick and single simple change, it takes years of practice and you'll have frequent relapses into hopelessness, but it does start with a simple change of perspective.
Act depressed and you'll feel depressed. Act happy and eventually you'll be happy.

Re:Ignore your problems.

[Nephandus]

Circular argument and intentional selection bias. "Success" there requires constant redefinition to fit whatever the fuck happens. It's both a no true Scotsman fallacy and changing the goalposts. When the "positive" wacko misses something, he pulls a doublethink and redefines his supposed values such that his altered goals arbitrarily fit whatever he happen to hit, so he "succeeded" to hit his completely redefined target. Being unhappy because you're not mindfucked into wanting whatever garbage you're stuck with isn't "no good purpose". Just because your values are lies your constantly rewrite to fit arbitrary conditions doesn't make everyone else's values as utterly meaningless as yours are. Some of us actually value what we value. Shocking, I know...