Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception
What makes one person socially insightful but mathematically challenged, and another musically gifted yet devoid of a sense of direction? Individual differences in general cognitive ability are thought to be mediated by “generalist genes” that affect many cognitive abilities similarly without specif...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Elsevier Ltd.
2012
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72376 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3853-7885 |
| _version_ | 1811068440019992576 |
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| author | Zhu, Qi Song, Yiying Hu, Siyuan Li, Xiaobai Tian, Moqian Zhen, Zonglei Dong, Qi Kanwisher, Nancy Liu, Jia |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Zhu, Qi Song, Yiying Hu, Siyuan Li, Xiaobai Tian, Moqian Zhen, Zonglei Dong, Qi Kanwisher, Nancy Liu, Jia |
| author_sort | Zhu, Qi |
| collection | MIT |
| description | What makes one person socially insightful but mathematically challenged, and another musically gifted yet devoid of a sense of direction? Individual differences in general cognitive ability are thought to be mediated by “generalist genes” that affect many cognitive abilities similarly without specific genetic influences on particular cognitive abilities [1]. In contrast, we present here evidence for cognitive “specialist genes”: monozygotic twins are more similar than dizygotic twins in the specific cognitive ability of face perception. Each of three measures of face-specific processing was heritable, i.e., more correlated in monozygotic than dizygotic twins: face-specific recognition ability, the face-inversion effect [2], and the composite-face effect [3]. Crucially, this effect is due to the heritability of face processing in particular, not to a more general aspect of cognition such as IQ or global attention. Thus, individual differences in at least one specific mental talent are independently heritable. This finding raises the question of what other specific cognitive abilities are independently heritable and may elucidate the mechanisms by which heritable disorders like dyslexia and autism can have highly uneven cognitive profiles in which some mental processes can be selectively impaired while others remain unaffected or even selectively enhanced. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T07:56:02Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/72376 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T07:56:02Z |
| publishDate | 2012 |
| publisher | Elsevier Ltd. |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/723762022-09-30T01:04:50Z Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception Zhu, Qi Song, Yiying Hu, Siyuan Li, Xiaobai Tian, Moqian Zhen, Zonglei Dong, Qi Kanwisher, Nancy Liu, Jia Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT Kanwisher, Nancy Kanwisher, Nancy Kanwisher, Nancy What makes one person socially insightful but mathematically challenged, and another musically gifted yet devoid of a sense of direction? Individual differences in general cognitive ability are thought to be mediated by “generalist genes” that affect many cognitive abilities similarly without specific genetic influences on particular cognitive abilities [1]. In contrast, we present here evidence for cognitive “specialist genes”: monozygotic twins are more similar than dizygotic twins in the specific cognitive ability of face perception. Each of three measures of face-specific processing was heritable, i.e., more correlated in monozygotic than dizygotic twins: face-specific recognition ability, the face-inversion effect [2], and the composite-face effect [3]. Crucially, this effect is due to the heritability of face processing in particular, not to a more general aspect of cognition such as IQ or global attention. Thus, individual differences in at least one specific mental talent are independently heritable. This finding raises the question of what other specific cognitive abilities are independently heritable and may elucidate the mechanisms by which heritable disorders like dyslexia and autism can have highly uneven cognitive profiles in which some mental processes can be selectively impaired while others remain unaffected or even selectively enhanced. 2012-08-28T17:48:43Z 2012-08-28T17:48:43Z 2010-01 2009-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0960-9822 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72376 Zhu, Qi et al. “Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception.” Current Biology 20.2 (2010): 137–142. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3853-7885 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.067 Current Biology Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Elsevier Ltd. Kanwisher via Courtney Crummett |
| spellingShingle | Zhu, Qi Song, Yiying Hu, Siyuan Li, Xiaobai Tian, Moqian Zhen, Zonglei Dong, Qi Kanwisher, Nancy Liu, Jia Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception |
| title | Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception |
| title_full | Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception |
| title_fullStr | Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception |
| title_full_unstemmed | Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception |
| title_short | Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception |
| title_sort | heritability of the specific cognitive ability of face perception |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72376 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3853-7885 |
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