Nature vs. nurture is a commonly referenced conflict, and in scientific terms, we usually define as a binary of genes vs. environment. The idea is that you’re shaped by your experiences, which are external stimuli, and your inheritance of traits, which constitutes an internal stimulus. A new study strongly suggests that the dichotomy is, at best, a myth in that environment plays a role in shaping how traits are expressed. Perhaps the best albeit equally subjective evidence of how intricate the interplay between environment and traits is would be some of the seemingly nonfunctional traits that get expressed for reasons that are difficult to articulate like whether or not a person can roll his or her tongue.
Genes are deemed vital by many …show more content…
Kong’s team was innovative in their methodology for testing this hypothesis. Rather than analyze individual gene variants to measure any discernible impacts, they summed up the influence of hundreds of thousands of gene variants regardless of whether the influence of a variant was weak or strong.
The study inherently demonstrates just how nuanced the interplay between nature and nurture actually is. The expression of any trait, therefore, is likely to be representative of all kinds of fascinating correlations that we don’t yet understand. Being able to fold your tongue could bear some very meaningful insight into what your childhood was like for example. It’s been scientifically documented, in fact, that—for whatever yet unexplained reason—more women can fold their tongues than men. Only between 65 and 81 percent of people are capable at …show more content…
She didn’t have it. “Determined not to [be] beaten at this admittedly pointless skill, I spent idle moments practising. To my surprise, eventually, I could do it. This puzzled me, as a genetically-inherited capability is not something you should be able to learn to do. The reason I could, is that the simple inheritance notion of tongue-rolling is a myth.” She adds that, if it were true, identical twins would never vary, but a study published in the ‘50s showed seven of 33 pairs of twins didn’t match; one could roll the tongue while the other
Genes are deemed vital by many …show more content…
Kong’s team was innovative in their methodology for testing this hypothesis. Rather than analyze individual gene variants to measure any discernible impacts, they summed up the influence of hundreds of thousands of gene variants regardless of whether the influence of a variant was weak or strong.
The study inherently demonstrates just how nuanced the interplay between nature and nurture actually is. The expression of any trait, therefore, is likely to be representative of all kinds of fascinating correlations that we don’t yet understand. Being able to fold your tongue could bear some very meaningful insight into what your childhood was like for example. It’s been scientifically documented, in fact, that—for whatever yet unexplained reason—more women can fold their tongues than men. Only between 65 and 81 percent of people are capable at …show more content…
She didn’t have it. “Determined not to [be] beaten at this admittedly pointless skill, I spent idle moments practising. To my surprise, eventually, I could do it. This puzzled me, as a genetically-inherited capability is not something you should be able to learn to do. The reason I could, is that the simple inheritance notion of tongue-rolling is a myth.” She adds that, if it were true, identical twins would never vary, but a study published in the ‘50s showed seven of 33 pairs of twins didn’t match; one could roll the tongue while the other