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Science

Massive Study Searching For Genes Behind Intelligence Finds Little 269

Posted by Soulskill from the genetically-enhanced-superhumans-will-still-love-reality-tv dept.
An anonymous reader writes: It's been taken for granted that science would, one day, figure out what parts of our DNA make us smart (or not). But a huge new study done by a group of almost 60 researchers using genome data on over 100,000 people has come up empty-handed. The scientists first looked for differences in the genome that correlated with academic achievement. After narrowing it down to 69 individual sites, they gave cognitive tests to separate group of 24,000 people and looked for evidence of difference at those same locations (abstract). Most of the sites weren't significantly different from chance — the (already weak) genetic influence of genes on height has an effect 20 times greater. On top of that, the three gene locations that did seem to have a stronger correlation weren't involved in development of the nervous system.
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Massive Study Searching For Genes Behind Intelligence Finds Little More

Massive Study Searching For Genes Behind Intelligence Finds Little

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  • Great news (Score:3)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh&gmail,com> on Thursday September 11, 2014 @10:18AM (#47880057) Journal

    GATTACA becomes a little less plausible!

    But what of this story?

    http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes when I saw that news in the summer I thought it was misguided. I did a short essay on genetics vs environment as part of my psychology education where the conclusion was that environment dictates the IQ of children and genes the IQ of adults. The cause of this might be that adults choose and form their own environments.

      This might mean that environment is the biggest factor in the average person's intelligence, but that their genes affect what type of environment they choose to have.

      Personally I think th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Just because they don't know where to look, doesn't mean it's not there.

      Probably, there are a great many genetic factors that could play a direct or indirect role in intelligence, either for the better or for the worse.

      Also... let's not discount things such as eating habits, and nurture --- discipline, motivational factors, inspiration, culture, etc.

      And the fact that it might be genetic, but 50,000 people might each have totally different genes contributing to their higher intelligence.

      • Just because they don't know where to look, doesn't mean it's not there.

        They looked everywhere, they found nothing. They weren't looking for a meaning, just a correlation. The correlation they found accounted for about half an IQ point, which is insignificant in the grander scheme of things. Perhaps there are genetic markers that predispose you to intelligence, but the point is that our society does not favour those with them, and in fact renders any such factors null. The assumption that people of higher social status often make, that their family has been successful because t

    • But what of this story? http://science.slashdot.org/st [slashdot.org]... [slashdot.org]

      The scientists in that story also failed to find specific genes affecting the skill levels (they looked). In other words, they found a correlation, but not a causation.

  • the researchers were coincidentally all missing a particular gene and none of them could figure out what its purpose was.

  • My parents are both dumber than dirt but I'm way smarter than them.

    • LOL.. That will change as you get older young grasshopper.. You will find your self dumber and your parents smarter as the wisdom that comes with age sets in.

      If you have kids, they will look at you the same way.

    • So you're ... dirt?

  • Wait: Genes do not strongly determine height??? (Score:5, Informative)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @10:22AM (#47880105) Homepage

    the (already weak) genetic influence of genes on height has an effect 20 times greater

    Wait... did I just read that genes only have a weak influence on height?????

    Googling "genes for height"

    ...about 60 to 80 percent [scientificamerican.com] of the difference in height between individuals is determined by genetic factors...

    Height clearly has a lot to do with genetics [ox.ac.uk] - shorter parents tend to have shorter children, and taller parents tend to have taller children...

    ...Over 80 per cent of the variation within a given population is estimated to be attributable to genetic factor... [ox.ac.uk]

    Okay, phew! I must have misinterpreted the meaning of "already weak genetic influence." Also, each of those articles do go on to explain that nutrition, including fetal nutrition, have a significant impact as well.

    • This is from the New Yorker [newyorker.com], not a scientific paper certainly, but it's interesting and relevant nonetheless. It may explain some of the comments regarding genetic and environmental factors.

      Height variations within a population are largely genetic, but height variations between populations are mostly environmental, anthropometric history suggests. If Joe is taller than Jack, it’s probably because his parents are taller. But if the average Norwegian is taller than the average Nigerian it’s becaus

    • Shorter parents tend to have shorter children for one or two generations, then it oscilates to the other edge, and a generation with taler children shows up.

      Certainly the range in height is partly determined by genes, however the main factur is nutrition of the mother and the embryo and later the born child itself.

      Traditionally, 100 years back, all italians, greeks and spanish people where considered small. Meanwhile north Italy is dominated by tall people, and regardless where I go, with my 172cm I'm just

  • Did they look at the CVs of those 100,000 people? How many of them were PhDs? How many were prolific inventors? How many where self-made *gasp* one-percenters?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      "How many of them were PhDs? How many were prolific inventors? How many where self-made *gasp* one-percenters?"
      none of which is an actual indication of intelligence.
      It's likely to be a strong indication of motivation.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      self-made *gasp* one-percenters?

      There's no such thing. Everyone with that kind of wealth either inherited it or got extremely lucky. Its not possible to become mindbogglingly wealthy through hard work and diligence; there's no such thing as a "self-made millionaire".

  • Maybe... (Score:3)

    by Ultra64 ( 318705 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @10:23AM (#47880113)

    ...the brain really is just for cooling the blood after all.

  • That choice of proxy needs some support, lest they end up accidentally gathering evidence that earning a 5.5 GPA in basketweaving does not correlate with unusual genes.

    • My first thought, exactly. Who would have thought that academics would equate intelligence (and other admirable traits, as well?) with academic achievement? Are there other ways in which this innate component of intelligence can manifest? Might cultural and socioeconomic factors - among other things - muddy the association?

  • Intelligence is highly heritable (Score:5, Informative)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @10:27AM (#47880155)
    The summary is incorrect, please read the abstract to form your own opinion. Specifically:

    "Convergent evidence from a set of bioinformatics analyses implicates four specific genes (KNCMA1, NRXN1, POU2F3, and SCRT). All of these genes are associated with a particular neurotransmitter pathway involved in synaptic plasticity, the main cellular mechanism for learning and memory. "

    Intelligence is highly heritable, but there is no single 'genius' gene and often there are multiple genetic markers that have similar positive or negative effects. This study looked for common genetic variants that correlated with memory and learning and found them!
    • So many human traits are clearly inheritable, it certainly makes sense that those traits that enable to person to accumulate intelligence are as well, whether it is actual learning capacity or something indirectly supporting like behavioral traits or visual spacial perception. That there are so many factors that contribute, and that there is not a solidly deterministic measure of 'intelligence", and that there are environmental factors that impact the outcomes, its simply a hard thing to correlate.

    • The problem is that they don't completely (or sufficiently) explain the variation that is seen.

      • Re:Intelligence is highly heritable (Score:5, Informative)

        by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @10:54AM (#47880419)
        You are moving the goalposts. This study didn't set out to completely explain intelligence on genetic level, they set out to find some evidence that some aspects of intelligence can be linked to specific genes and they found them. They also found a number of false positives, leading to your mistaken conclusion that they only found false positives.

        • No, I'm not.

          I mean, of the predictive utility of what they have discovered is presumably real. But the point I'm contesting is your central thesis that "intelligence is highly heritable". Which is not what this study found. Correlations of intelligence to (these) genetics, even on multivariate examinations, is weak. Thus your "intelligence is highly heritable" comes of as reductionism.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sinij ( 911942 )
            You are technically correct on one point, this study did not look into broad question of heritability of intelligence. They only looked into specific genes linked to specific traits associated with some aspects of intelligence. From the general body of knowledge we also know that these genes would be heritable.

            Since we are nitpicking, you are also incorrect by stating that "the predictive utility of what they have discovered" - they have not performed exhaustive search for all genes that would positively

            • Now that is moving the goalposts. But that's okay, I understand the point you're trying to make, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expand to such a search. Just don't expect me to grant you the premise that it's a likely explanation.

        • The summary indicates they did not just want to find evidence, but the genes.
          Which can be very tricky if those genes are more related to the metabolism, e.g nerotransmitter production, digesting of amino acids, transports to the brain, a minimal better lung (without exercising) and better oxigen distibution.
          There might be hundrets of factors which all only contribute a very small thing.
          Bottom line intelligence/talent brings you only so far. More important is knowledge, facts and 'procedures'.
          You can be as t

    • If intelligence was hereditary, it should be trivial to point to a family of increasingly intelligent people who should reach their pinnacle about today.

  • The problem with Smart Genes (Score:5, Funny)

    by cirby ( 2599 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @10:31AM (#47880199)

    The genes are obviously smart enough to hide from researchers.

  • And as we know, the hardware is only half the battle. The "software", or in case of intelligence, the actual processes and the way the brain actually works and develops during the life time, is still mostly unknown to us. It's a bit like studying the processor chips from any give age, and trying to "sort" them, or find a way to "classify" them by performance, without actually knowing how or what software then can run.

    As with some other things in life, the genes might give you a "framework", or a starting pl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      As many of you know, you can do amazing things with Raspberry Pi and can completely waste performance of Xeon E5. Intelligence is not interchangeable with success or productivity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      "And as we know, the hardware is only half the battle."
      no, that's the point. Is it half? or is it 20%? 70%? 0%? Is it having more of a certain protein type that 'walks' the DNA chain?
      Is it just getting interested in something at a young age develops your brain in different ways? some of each?

  • Does any one see it? (Score:3)

    by Lucas123 ( 935744 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @10:38AM (#47880271) Homepage
    The irony. The smart people couldn't figure out what makes someone smart... perhaps because they were using the wrong parameters.

  • So they were wrong in their hypothesis that these 69 sites on the genome are related to intelligence. This does not mean that other sites on the genome aren't related to intelligence.

    On top of that, the three gene locations that did seem to have a stronger correlation weren't involved in development of the nervous system.

    So they really don't have complete knowledge of this extremely complex system. Not surprising. Time to review their assumptions, and come up with a new hypothesis to test. They still gained knowledge (what doesn't work), it's just not the knowledge they were hoping for.

  • With "smart" people ranging from type-A personalities, to high-functioning autistics, it's not surprising they wouldn't find one specific set of genes for intelligence. There is extreme variation in "smart", and even more for "academic achievement", where a complete idiot (for lack of a better term) willing to put in substantial effort, can perform just as well as a highly intelligent person without such motivation.

  • Intelligence may be a factor in achievement (if it exists), but achievement has many other factors - most of them social and contextual.

  • Article is totally misleading (Score:4, Insightful)

    by devent ( 1627873 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @11:01AM (#47880481) Homepage

    From the original paper:
    http://www.pnas.org/content/ea... [pnas.org]

    We identify several common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance using a two-stage approach: we conduct a genome-wide association study of educational attainment to generate a set of candidates, and then we estimate the association of these variants with cognitive performance. In older Americans, we find that these variants are jointly associated with cognitive health. Bioinformatics analyses implicate a set of genes that is associated with a particular neurotransmitter pathway involved in synaptic plasticity, the main cellular mechanism for learning and memory. In addition to the substantive contribution, this work also serves to show a proxy-phenotype approach to discovering common genetic variants that is likely to be useful for many phenotypes of interest to social scientists (such as personality traits).

    How the hell does the article now writes that "The scientists first looked for differences in the genome that correlated with academic achievement"? No, they looked for "educational attainment". Then the abstract goes on "Three SNPs (rs1487441, rs7923609, and rs2721173) are significantly associated with cognitive performance after correction for multiple hypothesis testing." SNPs are different alleles of the same gene.

    Then, "Convergent evidence from a set of bioinformatics analyses implicates four specific genes (KNCMA1, NRXN1, POU2F3, and SCRT). All of these genes are associated with a particular neurotransmitter pathway involved in synaptic plasticity, the main cellular mechanism for learning and memory." But the article states that " On top of that, the three gene locations that did seem to have a stronger correlation weren't involved in development of the nervous system."

    What the hell??

  • 1 Million monkeys at typewriters don't finish writing Shakespeare either!
  • Sounds like maybe they put the cart before the horse. "Intelligence," of the kind that can be scored on academic tests, is a combination of raw potential, opportunity and effort. You can have amazing potential for intellect, but never get off the family farm - get "home schooled" and told that the earth is flat and math is a tool of the devil - you will then fail any external metric of "intelligence" that requires you to know and apply facts. Likewise, someone who has barely average potential can, given
  • For the most part nature gives us the wetware to form connections. It's the white matter that matters after all. It forms the interconnecting network between the neurons.

    So nurture has something to do with it too, so too education.
  • Gene Expression drives a lot of things and that is not captured when just the DNA is investigated.
  • My quick read of the headline was little intelligence was found.

  • What's intelligence have to do with it? (Score:3)

    by morgauxo ( 974071 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @11:29AM (#47880829)

    They weren't trying to correlate intelligence with genes. They were trying to correlate educational attainment with genes. That is not the same thing. People don't always apply their full intelligence towards school. Also, doing well and going far in school doesn't prove much about one's intelligence. It proves one can remember facts long enough to regurgitate them in a test. I suppose that is a kind of intelligence but there is much more to it than that! I think that having an analytical mind and actually thinking about those facts can get in the way of the study, regurgitate, forget, repeat process and is therefore detrimental to one's grades.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      They were trying to correlate educational attainment with genes.

      That should have been easy. If daddy is successful, you get into the best schools.

      Perhaps this demonstrates what a lot of people already suspect: If daddy spends his entire life at the office, making money, odds are he's not really the daddy. Better to correlate intelligence with the pool boy.

  • From the summary... (Score:3)

    by NotQuiteReal ( 608241 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @11:40AM (#47880951) Journal
    They were looking for "academic achievement", not necessarily intelligence, per se.
  • If genes did not matter we would not see a few children born with IQs so low that they can not breath without mechanical aids. I suspect that genetics are less varied when the samples come from a population that is out and about and functioning as the low end of the generic pool is absent for those not housed in institutions. There is also the point that the way each ethnic group behaves has an effect on the unborn in the womb. For example one ethnic group might display social skills or

  • abstract is rather different (Score:4, Insightful)

    by silfen ( 3720385 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @12:18PM (#47881425)

    The AT article seems to try to put a spin on it, but the actual abstract sounds quite different:

    We identify common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance using a two-stage approach, which we call the proxy-phenotype method. ... Convergent evidence from a set of bioinformatics analyses implicates four specific genes (KNCMA1, NRXN1, POU2F3, and SCRT). All of these genes are associated with a particular neurotransmitter pathway involved in synaptic plasticity, the main cellular mechanism for learning and memory.

    It's clear from twin studies that IQ has a strong genetic component [wikipedia.org], about as strong as height: both have a heritability of around 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to 1, with 1 being variability being entirely genetically determined). Here's a bit more info on heritability from Nature: http://www.nature.com/scitable... [nature.com]

    Failing to find the genes responsible in this study means nothing since the current SNPs we test for are quite limited. Ultimately, these questions can only be resolved by full genome sequencing of large numbers of people. Until then, we may get lucky in identifying genes in these kinds of studies, but failure to find something means little. And, actually, they did find something interesting.

    • Re:abstract is rather different (Score:4, Funny)

      by slew ( 2918 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @01:50PM (#47882393)

      I was about to post something similar. The spin is quite strange given the reading of the abstract.

      FWIW, I believe the original study that identified the 3 SNPs in educational attainment is here [nih.gov], but as mentioned it's a very weak statistical correlation as it only contributes to about 1 additional month of schooling on average. Also the assumption that the genes vary in terms of SNPs is also a big assumption which may be false too.

      Basically, they seem to be mostly saying it's unlikely that a small mutation (because that's what a SNP is mostly) that was selected/amplified by evolution can determine our intelligence. That's really baby steps in this question.

      Perhaps some sort of DNA methylation which is correlated with in-utero nutrition levels interacts with the underlying DNA expression somehow that is a better proxy for what we think of as intelligence (which is only weakly correlated with academic achievement). If so, we probably aren't going to find it by this technique at all. Kinda makes this total non-news in my book.

  • There's a perfectly logical explanation ... (Score:3)

    by krygny ( 473134 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @12:36PM (#47881625)

    ... why they didn't find a correlating intelligence gene.

    They're all a bunch of idiots.

  • We do not understand intelligence at all (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday September 11, 2014 @10:59PM (#47886589)

    That is does not seem to be genetically just adds to the mystery. But there are other failures: While intelligence can be described by its effects, there is no theory at all how it works. The only existing model (automated theorem proving) is severely limited both by the nature of what it can do (construct mathematical theory) and by its inherently exponential effort which means it will never be able to do in practice hat smart human beings can do routinely. Then there is this little problem that intelligence has only been observed coupled with self-awareness and may also be tied to "free will", another two things that are not understood at all. Granted, most people are not really adept at using what intelligence they have (which routinely is also not that much), but it is still a defining quality for being a human being. It is really surprising that this quality proves intractable time and again.

    Now, there is a branch of religious fanatics called "physicalists" that insist everything is just "chemistry" or "physics". These people routinely vastly overestimate what is known scientifically and seem to be completely unable to deal with some rather fundamental things being unknown at this time. All typical characteristics of the religious fanatic. It is rather ironic that there people usually claim to be anti-religion and pro-science, when they have in fact invented their own disconnected-from-reality fantasy. These people usually neither understand the scientific process, nor what is known to science at this time. My take is they are people that sort-of understand that religion is bogus, but actually cannot be without it end hence invented this surrogate.

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