Re: [Futurework] NYTimes.com: Degrees and Dollars

[D and N]

Ray,

Thanks for all the great anonymous postings. Regarding musical aptitude 
genes, I found these two items from the World Science site recently. I 
wasn't altogether certain of their scientific foundation, not knowing 
that much about genetics. In the first piece the arginine vasopressin 
receptor 1A is also referred to as a gene--which sounded weird to me 
because I thought genes only determined the cellular characteristics, 
which would direct the cell to devise the receptor, but an antidiuretic 
hormone receptor? Regardless, as one reads the second piece, the 
research speaks to the genetic role of music in order to develop 
language, communication, and brain/body health/connections in general.

Natalia

*Similar genes may promote human music, bird song*

Feb. 26, 2005
Courtesy of the University of Helsinki
and World Science <http://www.world-science.net> staff

*Peo­ple's in­ter­est in mu­sic may be re­lat­ed to a gene that has 
al­so been found to be as­so­ci­at­ed with mu­sical ap­ti­tude -- and 
sing­ing in birds, a new study re­ports.

The find­ings al­so add to grow­ing ev­i­dence that mu­sic draws on a 
sys­tem of brain wir­ing that more gen­erally pro­motes at­tach­ment 
be­hav­iors, ac­cord­ing to the re­search­ers, Ir­ma Järvelä of the 
Uni­vers­ity of Hel­sin­ki and col­leagues.

"The re­sults sug­gest that will­ing­ness to lis­ten to mu­sic is 
re­lat­ed to neuro­bi­o­log­i­cal path­ways af­fect­ing so­cial 
af­filia­t­ion and com­mu­nica­t­ion," they wrote, re­port­ing their 
find­ings in the Feb. 10 ad­vance on­line edi­tion of the /Jour­nal of 
Hu­man Ge­net­ics/.

Mu­sic is part of all known cul­tures, Järvelä and col­league not­ed. 
Si­m­i­lar­i­ties be­tween hu­man and an­i­mal song have been de­tected, 
they ar­gue: both con­tain a mes­sage, and an in­ten­tion that re­flects 
emo­tion­al state and is often in­ter­preted cor­rectly even among 
dif­fer­ent spe­cies. Sev­er­al mu­sic-re­lat­ed be­hav­iors al­so 
pro­mote at­tach­ment, they added: lul­la­bies are meant to bond a 
par­ent with an in­fant, and sing­ing or play­ing mu­sic to­geth­er is 
based on team­work and may en­hance group co­he­sion.

The re­search­ers col­lect­ed da­ta on 437 Finns from 31 fam­i­lies, 
aged eight to 93, with mu­sical education ranging from none to 
ex­ten­sive. The par­ti­ci­pants were sur­veyed about their mu­sic 
lis­tening habits and tested in three ways for mu­sical ap­ti­tude. 
Their DNA was al­so an­a­lyzed.

Will­ing­ness to lis­ten to mu­sic was as­so­ci­at­ed with vari­ants in 
a gene called ar­gi­nine vas­o­pres­sin re­cep­tor 1A, the 
invest­i­gators found. The gene serves to help transmit a hormone called 
ar­gi­nine vas­o­pres­sin in the brain.

The Hel­sin­ki sci­en­tists had al­so found as­socia­t­ion be­tween the 
same gene and mu­sical ap­ti­tude in find­ings re­ported in the May 2009 
is­sue of the re­search jour­nal /PLoS One/. And the ver­sion of that 
chem­i­cal known in birds and oth­er spe­cies was found to in­crease 
dawn sing­ing in male field spar­rows in a study de­scribed in the 
Au­gust 1998 edi­tion of the jour­nal /Hor­mones and Be­hav­ior/. Dutch 
re­search de­tailed in the /Eu­ro­pe­an Jour­nal of Phar­ma­col­o­gy/ 
for last Jan­u­ary al­so found that ma­ni­pu­lat­ing lev­els of the 
sub­stance, called va­so­tocin, in song­birds "pro­motes ac­qui­si­tion 
of a sta­ble ster­e­o­typed song pat­tern." Va­so­tocin al­so 
in­flu­ences breed­ing in lizards and fish, Järvelä and col­leagues said.

The re­sults "pro­vide a mo­lec­u­lar ev­i­dence of sound or mu­sic's 
role in so­cial com­mu­nica­t­ion, and are pro­vid­ing tools for 
fur­ther stud­ies on gene-culture ev­o­lu­tion in mu­sic," the 
uni­vers­ity said in a sum­mary of the re­search re­leased on Feb. 24.**
*


*Musical genes may be coming to light*

April 30, 2008
Special to World Science <http://www.world-science.net>

*Sci­en­tists say they've found ap­prox­i­mate loca­t­ions in our 
ge­nome where genes af­fect­ing mu­si­cal tal­ent may lie, the re­sults 
of the first, small study to sys­tem­at­ic­ally seek these out.

The find­ings suggest mu­si­cal abil­ity is partly ge­net­ic and may 
share ev­o­lu­tion­ary roots with lan­guage, ac­cord­ing to the 
re­search­ers, who stud­ied Finn­ish fam­i­lies.

*


**he work may al­so be a step to­ward re­veal­ing "the role of mu­sic in 
hu­man brain func­tion, hu­man ev­o­lu­tion and its rela­t­ion­ship to 
lan­guage," they wrote, though they added it will take larg­er 
fol­low­up stud­ies to clar­i­fy this.

The study of 234 Finns from 15 fam­i­lies---all with at least some 
mu­sicians---was pub­lished in the April 18 ad­vance on­line is­sue of 
the/Jour­nal of Med­i­cal Ge­net­ics/.

Kris­ti­ina Pul­li of the Uni­ver­s­ity of Hel­sin­ki and col­leagues 
tested the par­ti­ci­pants us­ing so-called link­age anal­y­ses, a type 
of probe de­signed to tie par­tic­u­lar traits to spe­cif­ic ar­eas of 
the ge­nome.

The anal­y­sis works by ex­am­in­ing wheth­er a giv­en trait of­ten 
oc­curs in peo­ple who al­so have a dis­tinct bit of ge­net­ic code at a 
known ge­nomic site. If so, it sug­gests this "mark­er" code is 
phys­ic­ally near a gene for that trait; oth­er­wise, gene-scram­b­l­ing 
pro­cesses in­volved in re­pro­duc­tion would tend to en­sure the two 
things stopped oc­cur­ring to­gether.

As part of the re­search, each par­ti­ci­pant al­so took three tests of 
mu­si­cal ap­ti­tude.

The re­search­ers re­ported find­ing "sig­nif­i­cant ev­i­dence" for an 
as­socia­t­ion be­tween that abil­ity and a small re­gion of 
Chro­mo­some 4. Hu­man genes lie on about two doz­en dis­tinct 
chro­mo­somes, most num­bered by size from big­gest to small­est.

The patch of DNA in ques­tion en­com­passed about 50 genes, Pul­li and 
col­leagues wrote. Of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est with­in these, they 
added, was one known as netrin re­cep­tor UNC5C pre­cur­sor. This gene, 
they wrote, in­ter­acts with mo­le­cules that gov­ern the de­vel­op­ment 
of brain cells and their intercon­nec­tions. Mu­ta­tions in the gene are 
al­so in­di­rectly linked to de­fects in time and pitch pro­cess­ing, 
they added.

There's al­so ev­i­dence such mutations may be con­nect­ed to the 
lan­guage dys­func­tion dys­lex­ia, sug­gest­ing pos­si­ble 
con­nec­tions be­tween mu­sic and lan­guage, the team pro­posed. 
In­ter­est­ing­ly, they added, of the three mu­si­cal tests they used, 
the one with the strongest ap­par­ent link to the gene re­gion is al­so 
pre­dic­tive of dys­lex­ia, which im­pairs read­ing and spell­ing abil­ity.

The team al­so re­ported two oth­er snip­pets of the ge­nome pos­sibly 
but more weakly linked to mu­si­cal ap­ti­tude, on Chro­mo­somes 8 and 
18---the lat­ter at a re­gion al­so linked to dys­lex­ia.

In find­ings that ech­oed Pul­li's some­what, a sep­a­rate group 
re­ported in the April 16 ad­vance on­line is­sue of the /Jour­nal of 
Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­sci­ence/ that chil­dren with lan­guage syn­tax 
deficits al­so have mu­si­cal dif­fi­cul­ties .

Sci­en­tists have long sus­pected mu­sic might have ge­net­ic roots. 
"Mu­sic is an an­cient and un­iver­sal fea­ture across all hu­man 
so­ci­eties," not­ed Pul­li and col­leagues. The not-un­com­mon 
ap­pear­ance of fam­i­lies of mu­si­cians, such as the clan that 
fa­mously spawned J.S. Bach in 1685, al­so sug­gest a ge­net­ic basis, 
the re­search­ers added---though oth­er fac­tors could ex­plain that 
phe­nom­e­non.

Their stu­dy, they con­tin­ued, while too small to be de­fin­i­tive, is 
"a start­ing point for fur­ther map­ping, isola­t­ion, and 
char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of genes that pre­dis­pose to mu­si­cal ap­ti­tude."**
**


On 3/8/2011 9:47 PM, Ray Harrell wrote:

Think of the ensembles that the mining corporations funded in England 
and Nova Scotia.   All to build community and coherence.    It doesn't 
work unless it's long term and carries over generations.   It took 300 
years for the great works of the 19^th century to evolve in Europe.   
When they began to let that go, they slipped into war.     Njinsky  
couldn't believe what they had let happen.   It so depressed him that 
he ended his life in an insane asylum.   The greatest artist of his 
day.      To get Bach you needed seven generations of Bach family 
musicians.   It's complex.

still anonymous


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