Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception
Heritability of the Specific Cognitive Ability of Face Perception
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2009.11.067
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发表时间：
2010-01-26
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
Liu, Jia
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Zhu, Qi;Song, Yiying;Liu, Jia
是什么让一个人有社会洞察力，但数学挑战，另一个音乐天才，但缺乏方向感？一般认知能力的个体差异被认为是由“通才基因”介导的，这些基因类似地影响许多认知能力，而没有特定的遗传影响特定的认知能力[1]。相比之下，我们在这里提出的证据，认知“专家基因”：单卵双胞胎更相似，比双卵双胞胎在特定的认知能力的面孔知觉。面部特异性处理的三个指标中的每一个都是可遗传的，即，单卵双胞胎比双卵双胞胎更相关：面部特异性识别能力，面部倒置效应[2]和复合面部效应[3]。重要的是，这种影响是由于面部处理的遗传性，而不是更普遍的认知方面，如智商或全局注意力。因此，至少一种特定智力的个体差异是独立遗传的。这一发现提出了一个问题，即哪些其他特定的认知能力是独立遗传的，并可能阐明遗传性疾病（如阅读障碍和自闭症）可能具有高度不均匀的认知特征的机制，其中一些心理过程可以选择性受损，而其他心理过程则不受影响甚至选择性增强。
What makes one person socially insightful but mathematically challenged, and another musically gifted yet devoid of a sense of direction? Individual differences in general cognitive ability are thought to be mediated by "generalist genes" that affect many cognitive abilities similarly without specific genetic influences on particular cognitive abilities [1]. In contrast, we present here evidence for cognitive "specialist genes": monozygotic twins are more similar than dizygotic twins in the specific cognitive ability of face perception. Each of three measures of face-specific processing was heritable, i.e., more correlated in monozygotic than dizygotic twins: face-specific recognition ability, the face-inversion effect [2], and the composite-face effect [3]. Crucially, this effect is due to the heritability of face processing in particular, not to a more general aspect of cognition such as IQ or global attention. Thus, individual differences in at least one specific mental talent are independently heritable. This finding raises the question of what other specific cognitive abilities are independently heritable and may elucidate the mechanisms by which heritable disorders like dyslexia and autism can have highly uneven cognitive profiles in which some mental processes can be selectively impaired while others remain unaffected or even selectively enhanced.