Studying the Roots of Individuality

An anonymous reader sends an article from Quanta Magazine about research into individuality — how behavior varies (or doesn't) when genetics and environment are as similar as possible. Scientists are taking various strains of fruit fly that are genetically almost identical (the result of extreme inbreeding) and raising them alone in environments that are exact copies of each other. Then they run the fruit flies through a series of decision-making tests to see how varied their responses are. Some fruit fly strains show a high degree of variance for tasks like navigating a maze. Other strains show almost no variance, suggesting there's a genetic component to individuality. The scientists also found that manipulating a certain set of neurons in the fruit flies's brains could increase the variation in choices they make. One theory suggests that evolution tends to select for genes that increase individuality by making it more difficult for predators to predict what the prey will do next.

Comments

Re:On Individuality

[slew]

I don't know if simply following the crowd is a form of cowardice, more often an expression of human make as social beings.

You may argue that humans are at the top of the food chain, but more often than not, it takes a village to assure long term survival and being social beings is one behavior designed to gain acceptance in a village.

On the other hand, we tend to detest what is too similar to ourselves, so in a sense humans are like skyrmion (bosons that sometimes exhibit fermion exclusion statistics). At least that's one way to look at it if you extrapolate things from the behavior of sub-atomic particles ;^)

Re:Study could also prove effects of Drugs on Huma

[Immerman]

Seriously? Perhaps you meant lingering *long term* effects? I mean the whole point of taking Ritalin, caffeine, marijuana, alcohol, or any other mind-altering substance is to alter your thoughts and decisions. Though of course your brain is a self-reinforcing system, and as such anything that alters it's patterns short-term will tend to cause lingering long-term effects, especially with chronic usage.

But what makes you so sure those changes will be for the worse? It's not like we're some sort of divine beings created in an initially perfect form - we're animals with extensive symbolic reasoning systems bolted on at the last minute. Our basic natures are as brutish and shortsighted as any other animal.