Department of Psychology, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Mar 16;107(11):5238-41. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0913053107. Epub 2010 Feb 22.
Compared with notable successes in the genetics of basic sensory transduction, progress on the genetics of higher level perception and cognition has been limited. We propose that investigating specific cognitive abilities with well-defined neural substrates, such as face recognition, may yield additional insights. In a twin study of face recognition, we found that the correlation of scores between monozygotic twins (0.70) was more than double the dizygotic twin correlation (0.29), evidence for a high genetic contribution to face recognition ability. Low correlations between face recognition scores and visual and verbal recognition scores indicate that both face recognition ability itself and its genetic basis are largely attributable to face-specific mechanisms. The present results therefore identify an unusual phenomenon: a highly specific cognitive ability that is highly heritable. Our results establish a clear genetic basis for face recognition, opening this intensively studied and socially advantageous cognitive trait to genetic investigation.
与基本感觉转导的遗传学方面的显著成功相比，高级感知和认知的遗传学研究进展有限。我们提出，研究具有明确神经基础的特定认知能力，例如人脸识别，可能会有更多的发现。在一项关于人脸识别的双胞胎研究中，我们发现同卵双胞胎（0.70）之间的分数相关性是异卵双胞胎（0.29）的两倍多，这表明人脸识别能力受遗传因素影响较大。人脸识别分数与视觉和言语识别分数之间的相关性较低，表明人脸识别能力及其遗传基础主要归因于特定于面部的机制。因此，目前的结果确定了一种不寻常的现象：高度特定的认知能力具有高度遗传性。我们的研究结果为人脸识别建立了明确的遗传基础，使这一受到广泛研究和具有社会优势的认知特征能够进行遗传研究。
