Genetics+of+Intelligence+and+Personality

Ilian D., Amanda P., and Carol S. THE GENETICS OF PERSONALITY AND INTELLIGENCE:
 * [[image:dna_image.png width="153" height="46"]] || Why is it called the "Blueprint of Life?" || What is it a blueprint for? || What reads the blueprint? ||

Describe your Topic below: How differences in intelligence can be contributed to **genes** and **how much of those genes also influence our personality**. Especially in the case of **twins**,who have the same genes but do not have the same personalities and may not necessarily share the same environment so their intelligence ability is comparable within 70 percent.

Brainstorm what you know and what you would like to know: -people who share the same genes also share (within 70%) comparable mental abilities; esp. identical twins -gene on chromosome 6 is identified for intelligence -genetic influences become more apparent with age -intelligence is a combination of nature and nuture
 * = ** What we (think) we know ** ||=  ||= What we would like to know / understand ||
 * < __ Myers Psychology Modules 7e Textbook __

[|The Creative Science Quarterly] -adopted individuals can acquire traits from their adopted family only environmentally, and from their biological parents only genetically, making them ideal for study of environmental/genetic effects. -twins raised apart share genetic material, but have different environments. ||  ||< -how intelligence (scores) compare between twins, identical and fraternal. -how personality and intelligence are genetically related. -how environmental factors effect personality gene expression. ||

How do environmental factors affect one's gene expression? How do genes contribute to differences in intelligence? How do these genes also influence our personality? How do parents'/ancestors genetic intelligence and personality influence offspring's genetic intelligence and personality?
 * Driving Questions: **

IMAGES EMBEDDED IN GOOGLEDOC:
 * Background Research **[[image:Kngine.png width="279" height="89" align="right" link="@http://kngine.com/"]]

__**Articles **__
__** Information for Intelligence: **__

[|Williams Syndrome]

When the agouti gene is methylated (as it is in normal mice) the coat color is brown and the mouse has a low disease risk. Fat yellow mice and skinny brown are genetically identical. When researchers fed pregnant yellow mice a methyl-rich diet, most of the resulting pups were brown and healthy and stayed that way for life. These results indicate that an individual's adult health is heavily influenced by early prenatal factors. In other words, our health is not only determined by what we eat, but also what our parents ate.(from [|Utah])
 * The Agouti Gene**: When a mouse's agouti gene is completely unmethylated it has a yellow coat color, is obese and prone to diabetes and cancer.

First-borns and only children have higher intelligence, and academic performance. Intellectual climate of home is a function of family size and position in the family
 * The Rubber-Band Hypothesis:**

Twin studies are one of a family of designs in behavior genetics which aid the study of individual differences by highlighting the role of environmental and genetic causes on behavior. Twins are invaluable for studying these important questions because they disentangle the sharing of genes and environments. If we observe that children in a family are more similar than might be expected by chance, this may reflect shared environmental influences common to members of family —class, parenting styles, education etc.— but they will also reflect shared genes, inherited from parents. The twin design compares the similarity of identical twins who share 100% of their genes, to that of dizygotic or fraternal twins, who share only 50% of their genes. By studying many hundreds of families of twins, researchers can then understand more about the role of genetic effects, and the effects of shared and unique environment effects.
 * Twin Studies**:


 * Intelligence**: explain why we couldn't go in depth for testing--too small of a population

__** Information on Personality: **__

For some of us, it's satisfying to attribute social awkwardness to anxiety genes or to think that the driver who cuts off other cars as he zips across lanes is pumped up by the "warrior" gene. Was it a bad dopamine receptor gene that made author Ernest Hemingway prone to depression? Can variations in a vasopressin receptor gene--a key to monogamy in voles--help explain adulterous behavior? But as scientists are discovering, nailing down the genes that underlie our unique personalities has proven exceedingly difficult. That genes strongly influence how we act is beyond question. Several decades of twin, family, and adoption studies have demonstrated that roughly half of the variation in most behavioral traits can be chalked up to genetics. But identifying the causal chain in single-gene disorders such as Huntington's disease is child's play compared with the challenges of tracking genes contributing to, say, verbal fluency, outgoingness, or spiritual leanings.
 * Problems with Personality Genetics:**

[|Seeing Double for Class of 2011] Intelligencer Article


 * IPIP-NEO**: meant to be objective

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