A gene variant linked to emotional responses varies among races

[ApostateAbe]

A newly-discovered gene variant of the brain apparently causes "greater perceptual vividness." Not only that, but it reportedly varies by race: 50% of white Canadians have this variant but only 10% of Rwandans have it. It makes more plausible (not absolutely certain) the claim that the structure of brains of races vary due to genetics. It is only one gene out of many, however, and we would need to find ALL the genes to make such a conclusion absolutely certain, though it seems unlikely at this point that all races have distributions of genes such that all psychological phenotypes would be exactly equal given equal environments. Either Rwandans or whites would need different genes to exactly compensate in an opposing direction, but there is no reason to expect such a thing, unless maybe you are a creationist.

University press release is here: http://news.ubc.ca/2015/05/06/how-y...onal-information-is-influenced-by-your-genes/

Here is the abstract. If anyone has access to the full text, then please share it with me: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/35/16/6506.short

 

[fromderinside]

Wow. How do I put this? Oh, I know Neurogenetic Variations in Norepinephrine Availability Enhance Perceptual Vividness. What is neurogenetic variation? What is Norepinephrine availability? What is Perceptual Vividness? Finally what are the measures for enhancement? I'm sensing at least two dozen, what did I call them? Oh yeah, speculations, caveats, intervening variables, and the like do we have to wade though here to even get at whether the experiment is looking at what it says it is looking at, not to mention whether what it is looking at is meaningful in any way?

First I think I'll have to look over my basic nerve theory from my Sherrington days, then, go on to Hodgkin and his associates, then to Katz, that's even before I get to norepinephrine and its role in neural transmission before I get to what is its function in particular brain areas and whether those effects are actual or correlational, then I'm going to have to find something other than biochemical analysis of frozen sections in model species, then relate psychiatric to normal pathology then to genetic methods,etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, .....

Please ApostateAbe this is too far out for even pesudoscience.