Healing Music Enterprises Blog » musical DNA http://healingmusicenterprises.com/blog "Tune Your Life with Music" Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:02:30 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Scientists discover gene for musical talent! http://healingmusicenterprises.com/blog/2008/05/scientists-discover-gene-for-musical-talent/ http://healingmusicenterprises.com/blog/2008/05/scientists-discover-gene-for-musical-talent/#comments Mon, 26 May 2008 13:56:42 +0000 Dr. Alice Cash http://healingmusicenterprises.com/blog/?p=38

The work may al­so be a step to­ward re­veal­ing “the role of mu­sic in hu­man brain func­tion, hu­man ev­o­lu­tion and its rela­t­ion­ship to lan­guage,” they wrote, though they added it will take larg­er fol­low­up stud­ies to clar­i­fy this.

Sci­en­tists say they’ve found ap­prox­i­mate loca­t­ions in our ge­nome where genes af­fect­ing mu­si­cal tal­ent may lie, the re­sults of the first, small study to sys­tem­at­ic­ally seek these out.

The find­ings suggest mu­si­cal abil­ity is partly ge­net­ic and may share ev­o­lu­tion­ary roots with lan­guage, ac­cord­ing to the re­search­ers, who stud­ied Finn­ish fam­i­lies. 

The study of 234 Finns from 15 fam­i­lies—all with at least some mu­sicians—was pub­lished in the April 18 ad­vance on­line is­sue of the Jour­nal of Med­i­cal Ge­net­ics.

Kris­ti­ina Pul­li of the Uni­ver­s­ity of Hel­sin­ki and col­leagues tested the par­ti­ci­pants us­ing so-called link­age anal­y­ses, a type of probe de­signed to tie par­tic­u­lar traits to spe­cif­ic ar­eas of the ge­nome. 

The anal­y­sis works by ex­am­in­ing wheth­er a giv­en trait of­ten oc­curs in peo­ple who al­so have a dis­tinct bit of ge­net­ic code at a known ge­nomic site. If so, it sug­gests this “mark­er” code is phys­ic­ally near a gene for that trait; oth­er­wise, gene-scram­b­l­ing pro­cesses in­volved in re­pro­duc­tion would tend to en­sure the two things stopped oc­cur­ring to­gether.

As part of the re­search, each par­ti­ci­pant al­so took three tests of mu­si­cal ap­ti­tude.

The re­search­ers re­ported find­ing “sig­nif­i­cant ev­i­dence” for an as­socia­t­ion be­tween that abil­ity and a small re­gion of Chro­mo­some 4. Hu­man genes lie on about two doz­en dis­tinct chro­mo­somes, most num­bered by size from big­gest to small­est.

The patch of DNA in ques­tion en­com­passed about 50 genes, Pul­li and col­leagues wrote. Of par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est with­in these, they added, was one known as netrin re­cep­tor UNC5C pre­cur­sor. This gene, they wrote, in­ter­acts with mo­le­cules that gov­ern the de­vel­op­ment of brain cells and their intercon­nec­tions. Mu­ta­tions in the gene are al­so in­di­rectly linked to de­fects in time and pitch pro­cess­ing, they added.

There’s al­so ev­i­dence such mutations may be con­nect­ed to the lan­guage dys­func­tion dys­lex­ia, sug­gest­ing pos­si­ble con­nec­tions be­tween mu­sic and lan­guage, the team pro­posed. In­ter­est­ing­ly, they added, of the three mu­si­cal tests they used, the one with the strongest ap­par­ent link to the gene re­gion is al­so pre­dic­tive of dys­lex­ia, which im­pairs read­ing and spell­ing abil­ity.

The team al­so re­ported two oth­er snip­pets of the ge­nome pos­sibly but more weakly linked to mu­si­cal ap­ti­tude, on Chro­mo­somes 8 and 18—the lat­ter at a re­gion al­so linked to dys­lex­ia.

In find­ings that ech­oed Pul­li’s some­what, a sep­a­rate group re­ported in the April 16 ad­vance on­line is­sue of the Jour­nal of Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­sci­ence that chil­dren with lan­guage syn­tax deficits al­so have mu­si­cal dif­fi­cul­ties .

Sci­en­tists have long sus­pected mu­sic might have ge­net­ic roots. “Mu­sic is an an­cient and un­iver­sal fea­ture across all hu­man so­ci­eties,” not­ed Pul­li and col­leagues. The not-un­com­mon ap­pear­ance of fam­i­lies of mu­si­cians, such as the clan that fa­mously spawned J.S. Bach in 1685, al­so sug­gest a ge­net­ic basis, the re­search­ers added—though oth­er fac­tors could ex­plain that phe­nom­e­non.

Their stu­dy, they con­tin­ued, while too small to be de­fin­i­tive, is “a start­ing point for fur­ther map­ping, isola­t­ion, and char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of genes that pre­dis­pose to mu­si­cal ap­ti­tude.”

]]> http://healingmusicenterprises.com/blog/2008/05/scientists-discover-gene-for-musical-talent/feed/ 0 What creates a “Mozart”? The link between music and genetics http://healingmusicenterprises.com/blog/2008/05/what-creates-a-mozart-the-link-between-music-and-genetics/ http://healingmusicenterprises.com/blog/2008/05/what-creates-a-mozart-the-link-between-music-and-genetics/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 19:01:08 +0000 Dr. Alice Cash http://healingmusicenterprises.com/blog/?p=31

Have you ever wondered how a true musical genius or prodigy is created?  Do both parents need to be extremely musical or intelligent?  Although I think it helps it must not be mandatory because we know that Beethoven’s parents were not particularly musical.  Not so with Mozart.  Definitely his father was quite gifted and was also a composer.  Leopold Mozart wrote several compositions that have stood the test of time.  Of course his son, Wolfgang Amadeus wrote hundreds of brilliant works that will last for thousands of years I imagine.

A conference is being held on this topic in Bologna, Italy.  Even if you can’t attend it’s good to know that these kinds of conferences exist!

“Music under the microscope: the relation between biology and genetics and human music, its peculiarities and reasons. These are the main themes of the International Workshop on the Biology and Genetics of Music, to be held in Bologna, May 20 to 22, with leading scientists currently involved in researching the mysteries of music, invited to explain their recent findings to the audience.  Continued

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