Do you think you are smarter than others? Genes are responsible for only part of intelligence, the rest is determined by different environmental factors. This has been shown by a long study carried out in Scotland that studied the intelligence of about 2,000 people throughout their lives.
In the 1990s, a group of psychologists from the University of Edinburgh discovered that they had data on the intelligence of 11-year-olds from 1932 and 1947 . Carrying out the intelligence tests of these same people (about 2,000 individuals) and comparing them with data obtained decades ago could verify the development of intelligence in humans. In addition, if they took DNA samples they could also check the role that genes play in this development of intelligence to see if it is really important. And they do it like that.
As explained by Ian Deary, one of the scientists who has developed this research and which has recently been published in the journal Nature, “there is no perfect relationship, there were people who had risen and others who had fallen [on the intelligence list]” .
The sample of people studied, although it may seem large, is not large enough to be able to link genetic and cognitive traits in a definitive way, although it does serve to estimate how much genes influence aging and intelligence. As explained by the geneticist at the University of Queensland, Peter Visscher, in statements to the Australian ABC, ” we estimate that between a quarter and a third of these changes are genetic .” And the rest?
The neuropsychologist at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, involved in the research, Yaakov Stern, analyzed how it affects the environmental impact. According to their studies, the effects of context on intelligence may also be due to genetic factors. “There are many variants in the influence of the environment,” he explained in Nature.
This type of research not only serves to achieve higher levels of intelligence, but it can be the door to possible treatments for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
