[Futurework] musical genes

[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, knowing little 
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 playing a major role? 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."**
**


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