More evidence that it’s all in the genes

Scientists have raised new questions about free will, with some of the first evidence that the way people behave towards each other can be controlled by their genes rather than their environment and upbringing.

They have found that people with a rare genetic mutation known as Williams syndrome have brains that work abnormally in social situations, producing erratic and inappropriate behaviour.

The finding implies that humans’ social interactions are pre-programmed to some extent and that external influences - “nurture” in contrast to “nature” - may be less important.

The researchers, at the National Institute of Mental Health in America, will publish their findings today in Nature Neuroscience.

The institute’s director, Thomas Insel, said: “Social interactions are central to human experience and well-being and are adversely affected in psychiatric illness. This may be the first study to identify functional disturbances in a brain pathway associated with abnormal social behaviour caused by a genetic disorder.”

The researchers compared brains of people with Williams syndrome with those of healthy volunteers.

People with Williams syndrome are missing about 21 genes on chromosome 7, a deficit that makes it hard for them to judge how to respond to social situations.

They are impulsive in their behaviour towards others, often starting conversations with complete strangers and acting in an over-friendly fashion.

Conversely, they often become anxious and agitated in non-social situations where there is no real cause for alarm.

Researchers have suspected such behaviour is linked to abnormalities in the way information is processed in the amygdala, which lies deep in the brain and plays an important role in governing social behaviour.

In the normal volunteers, researchers found a complex neuron network through which the amygdala was controlled.

For people with Williams syndrome, by contrast, these networks had been disrupted. One implication of the study is that genetic testing could pick out children with Williams syndrome.

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Posted by jonjayray on Saturday, July 16, 2005 at 01:50 PM in Science & Technology
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Posted by ben tillman on July 16, 2005, 04:27 PM | #

Scientists have raised new questions about free will....

That’s a strange way to introduce this article. We have no need for science to lead us to this conclusion. It’s a simple matter of logic.

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