It’s long been known that intelligence is hereditary (at least to some extent), but research is ongoing into this phenomenon in the hope that the more we learn about the biology of the brain the better we are equipped to deal with problems and diseases that arise in the brain.
IQ research sheds new light on the brain
Researchers in Amsterdam have made a breakthrough into the biology of IQ. Their results, published in Nature Genetics and reported in the magazine of British Mensa, shed new light on our understanding of IQ and how the brain actually works.
The research team looked for genetic markers linked to intelligence in 13 groups of people of European descent, and among the 52 they found, 40 were ‘new’ ones that predominantly ‘switched on’ in the brain. They have some idea what the genes actually do, but there is more work to be done, partly because it is thought that at least hundreds, and probably thousands, of genes play their part in human intelligence, though each particular one might contribute only a tiny amount to a person’s overall IQ.
Professor Danielle Posthuma, who led the study, said the next step would be to block the genes’ functions in mice and observe what impact each had on the subject’s brain function.
She added that something similar could be done with human neurones, taken from skin cells in the lab.
This IQ research could help us understand Alzheimer’s better
Ultimately, the team hopes that their work will lead to a clearer understanding of the root cause of mental illnesses. Ideally, of course, their research would create a better understanding of degenerative mental impairments such as Alzheimer’s disease, which is quickly becoming a modern-day plague.
Professor Posthuma was quick to add that their research in identifying genes associated with intelligence wasn’t aimed at creating so-called ‘designer babies’, as she doesn’t believe it’s possible to reliably predict specific educational or intelligence outcomes solely from DNA evidence.
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