Date: August 30, 2018
Source: Linköping University
Summary:
Both
genetic and environmental factors explain cognitive traits, shows a new study
carried out on red junglefowl. Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden
have shown that the ability of fowl to cope with difficult learning tasks is
heritable, while their optimism can be explained by environmental factors.
What
determines how rapidly you learn? Or whether you are an optimist or pessimist?
The mental processes that determine how an animal (or a human) learns, reasons
and processes information are known by the general term cognition. How large is
the heritable part, in other words what is explained by genes, and how much is
explained by the environment? Research into the differences in cognitive
ability of animals has mainly been comparative and has focused on differences
between species. Less research has been on understanding variation that exists
between individuals within a species.
"The
question is growing in biology of why individuals within a species differ in
such important traits as cognition. We therefore decided to estimate how much
of the variation in cognition we see, that is heritable," says Hanne
Løvlie, associate professor in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology
at Linköping University, and principal investigator for the study.
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