>genetic effects contribute up to 54% of the variability in music reward sensitivity, with 70% of these effects being independent of music perceptual abilities and general reward sensitivity.
While this heritability seems high, my indirect impression is that most behavioral categories show similarly high measures in twin studies, though this is likely driven by massive numbers of genes. Welcome more informed folks to update this impression.
tptacek · 6h ago
Heritability is an extremely slippery statistic, best thought of as a new framing for a question than an answer. Sometimes genes are causal, sometimes they're corollary; you don't have a "lipstick-wearing" gene, but it's highly heritable. Broad complicated behavioral things like "music perception" are much more likely to do with culture (and culture's stratifying effect on genes) than on some polygenic causal structure.
(That said: music is an interesting case study, given the biology of audio perception.)
Hat tip to Nautilus for the article that led me to this: https://nautil.us/weve-got-the-beat-in-our-genes-1211821/
While this heritability seems high, my indirect impression is that most behavioral categories show similarly high measures in twin studies, though this is likely driven by massive numbers of genes. Welcome more informed folks to update this impression.
(That said: music is an interesting case study, given the biology of audio perception.)