- Oct 17, 2011
- 33,263
- 36,585
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Atheist
- Marital Status
- Legal Union (Other)
Genes Linked to Self-Awareness in Modern Humans Were Less Common in Neandertals
Findings published in 2019 have tied the learning and memory necessary for creative thought to three brain networks. These networks, which govern our emotional reactions, self-control and self-awareness, are associated with a suite of 972 genes identified in those studies. The same research group has now compared these genes among chimps, Neandertals and modern humans. Across all three species, the results show an overlap in emotional reactivity but a divergence in genetic sequences governing self-control and self-awareness. In a paper published on April 21 in Molecular Psychiatry, C. Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist and geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues report that modern humans also have a set of 267 genes from the larger set that the other two species lack. Most of these sequences are devoted to regulating genes in the self-awareness network.
For the new study, Cloninger and his colleagues considered the 972 gene sequences associated with the three brain networks they identified in modern humans. When the researchers sized up how much of the gene set belonged to each species, they found the biggest differences in those for self-awareness, intermediate differences in those for self-control and small differences in those for emotional reactivity.
Modern humans had solitary dibs on 267 of the genes overall. Of these, more than 90 percent are devoted to turning protein production up or down, most of them in the self-awareness network, as if evolution drove the addition of many fine-tuning dials for this network that enable delicate calibration.
Cloninger says that he and his co-authors, who include anthropologists, are “arguing that by the time H. sapiens left East Africa, they already had the creativity, longevity and sense of community that gave them the advantage to displace other hominids.”
[One drawback to the study:] “It could be that there is another set of genes responsible for cognitive traits in Neandertals that are not in humans,” he says.
[And since we can't test Neandertal self-awareness, we can't really discover those genes and how many there might be.]
Findings published in 2019 have tied the learning and memory necessary for creative thought to three brain networks. These networks, which govern our emotional reactions, self-control and self-awareness, are associated with a suite of 972 genes identified in those studies. The same research group has now compared these genes among chimps, Neandertals and modern humans. Across all three species, the results show an overlap in emotional reactivity but a divergence in genetic sequences governing self-control and self-awareness. In a paper published on April 21 in Molecular Psychiatry, C. Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist and geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues report that modern humans also have a set of 267 genes from the larger set that the other two species lack. Most of these sequences are devoted to regulating genes in the self-awareness network.
For the new study, Cloninger and his colleagues considered the 972 gene sequences associated with the three brain networks they identified in modern humans. When the researchers sized up how much of the gene set belonged to each species, they found the biggest differences in those for self-awareness, intermediate differences in those for self-control and small differences in those for emotional reactivity.
Modern humans had solitary dibs on 267 of the genes overall. Of these, more than 90 percent are devoted to turning protein production up or down, most of them in the self-awareness network, as if evolution drove the addition of many fine-tuning dials for this network that enable delicate calibration.
Cloninger says that he and his co-authors, who include anthropologists, are “arguing that by the time H. sapiens left East Africa, they already had the creativity, longevity and sense of community that gave them the advantage to displace other hominids.”
[One drawback to the study:] “It could be that there is another set of genes responsible for cognitive traits in Neandertals that are not in humans,” he says.
[And since we can't test Neandertal self-awareness, we can't really discover those genes and how many there might be.]
