Nature-Nurture Gene?
As a parent, when I see the phrase “nature-nurture,” I get a bit stuck on the “nurture” word, as any suggestion that we didn’t provide the right emotional, social, and so forth “environment” for Charlie and did not provide enough “nurture” can lead a parent to think of the discredited “refrigerator mother” theory of autism. Neuroscientists at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory are using the phrase “nature-nurture” to describe new findings about genes, the brain’s development, and autism. The researchers have found a set of genes—calcium sensor called cardiac Troponin C, or cTropC—that are
…..particularly sensitive to a critical period of development. The lack of proteins from these genes during a key phase of development could be one of the culprits in developing autism.
The study shows how autism “can be genetic and yet be dependent on the environment,” as co-author Mriganka Sur, Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience at the Picower Institute and chair of MIT’s brain and cognitive sciences department, says in Science Daily:
“Many genes require activity to be expressed and make their assigned proteins. They alter their expression when activity is altered. Thus, we reveal an important mechanism of brain development that should open up a window into the mechanisms and treatment of brain disorders such as autism.”
In the brain, some genes are only expressed, or turned on, in response to stimulus from the outside world. Like a panel of switches that turn lights on and off, genes that don’t receive electricity don’t “turn on” and express their particular proteins.
Scientists are trying to figure out the correlation between “nature”—the genes—-and “nurture”—the external environment. By identifying “which genes are particularly apt to switch their expression patterns in response to ‘nurture,’” they hope to detect the genes that are implicated in developmental disorders.
The study is published in the July 8th Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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POSTED IN: Cause, Environment, Neuroscience
9 opinions for Nature-Nurture Gene?
C. S. Wyatt
Jul 20, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Epigenetics definitely points to triggers related to life experience. At South Carolina (I think that’s correct, Edmund S. Higgins and his team have matched histome acetylation to external stimuli. In other words, events trigger some protein generation.
The epigenetics field is rather new, namely because of the nature-nurture debate. If parents and teachers are responsible for some stimuli, the implications are interesting and potentially disturbing. But, I have no doubt that some environmental and experiential triggers exist.
daedalus2u
Jul 20, 2008 at 11:07 pm
The only difference between all of the different cells of the body is their epigenetic programming. Every cell has the same DNA, a nerve cell, a liver cell, a skin cell, etc. The only difference is that some of it is turned on and some of it is turned off and some of it is turned sideways. There are many ways that the DNA can be “turned” there are probably a lot that we don’t know about. There are probably at least thousands for each of the hundreds of different types of cells. There could easily be an order of magnitude more.
Much of the epigenetic programming occurs in utero. That is when the differentiation is occurring during the first trimester. That is when the fetus is most sensitive to environmental effects. It is very well known that there is in utero programming of just about every organ, and that in utero programming affects the adult physiology. Nutritional deprivation has been shown to very clearly cause changes in adult physiology in humans. Stress has been shown to do the same in multiple animals.
farmwifetwo
Jul 21, 2008 at 9:11 am
I still feel that one of the biggest culprits to the youngests severity is pre-natal care of the lack thereof at the end. Yes, I spent 5 days in the hospital, yes, he was born 13 days early, but they didn’t induce when his heart rate dropped the moment I went in BP 170/110, and waited 5 days. Day 4 he stopped moving and I told them and they STILL waited until the next morning to do a non-stress, they still waited 6hrs to induce and he still wan’t born until nearly midnight after his heart rate crashed yet again.
Gene’s definately play a role, just looking around these 2 families and I can find definate signs of NVLD, and an Opa who definately had Asperger’s.
But I think, little boys brain got fried. They can claim my lack of nurturing all they wish…. but I was the one asking for help for him even before he was born.
Blaming nurture to a parent is cruel and inexcusable. We do what we can, when we can for a reason. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, guilt even more so.
But don’t ever acuse me of not doing my best, genes or not.
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/02/08/preeclampsia-hormone.html
“Women who suffer from high blood pressure during their pregnancies have higher levels of a hormone that increases blood pressure in the tissue that connects mother and fetus, researchers say” “Women who suffer from high blood pressure during their pregnancies have higher levels of a hormone that increases blood pressure in the tissue that connects mother and fetus, researchers say” “Pregnancy-induced high blood pressure is called pre-eclampsia. It affects 2.6 per cent of pregnancies in Canada, according to Health Canada, and leads to high levels of protein in the urine and swelling of the face and hands. It can also cause a pre-term delivery of the baby and can be fatal for both the infant and mother”
Makes you wonder….
S.
RAJ
Jul 21, 2008 at 9:37 am
Extreme emotional deprivation can lead to children who meet diagnostic criteria for “autism” using Gold Standard diagnostic tools such as ADOS and ARI-R. This has been shown in the study of Romanian orphans who were institutionalized shortly after birth and subjected to some of the worst institutionalized settings in the 20th century.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18093025?
The authors invoked the term “Pseudo Autism’ in discussing their children. In 1965 Kanner also commented on the use of the diagnostic cliche ‘Pseudo Autism”
http://neurodiversity.com/library_kanner_1965.html
Kanner wrote:
“To complicate things further, Crewel, in the hope of avoiding confusion between true autism and other conditions with autistic-like features, suggested the term pseudo-autism for the latter. Even this term came to be employed haphazardly, and conditions variously described as hospitalism, anaclitic depression, and separation anxiety were put under the heading of pseudo-autism”.
What is interesting is that all of the Romanian orphans described met diagnostic criteria for an ASD using the most widely respected ‘Gold Standard’ tools such as ADOS and ARI-I, raising important questions as to the actual validty of these Gold Standard diagnostic tools which may turn out to be ‘Fool’s Gold’
Patrick
Jul 21, 2008 at 2:55 pm
“Blaming nurture to a parent is cruel and inexcusable. We do what we can, when we can for a reason.”
Agreed, and my personal take on relief from the situation would be a long rant against profiteering and capitalism (economic slavery), which I won’t air here.
C. S. Wyatt
Jul 21, 2008 at 5:47 pm
The French, certainly not as “capitalist” as the U.S. model, still list childhood autism as a psychosis. The film, “No Hospital” (my lousy translation) actually makes the mother who kills her autistic child into a heroic figure, of sorts…
So don’t tell me this has to do with the economic model. Ignorance about mental health is rampant in China, for example, and made worse by that nation’s one-child policy that encourages some horrible actions.
Blame ignorance… period. It knows no political or economic limitations.
As for parental responsibility, it does matter to an extent that people here might only recognize from afar. When I see an abused student, I can almost promise the child will be an abuser. That’s conditioning. Nurturing definitely matters, as do other environmental conditions.
The parents here, online, are parents who care. But I have seen autism exacerbated by parents who really did dislike their children. They believed the child was a burden, and I’m convinced the child could tell.
Emily
Jul 21, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Epigenetic regulation continues throughout life. Twin studies have shown that the longer they’ve been alive, identical twins become less and less alike in their epigenetic patterning (which essentially means that they become less alike), a potential explanation for why one twin will develop a gene-related disorder but the other will not.
Emily
Jul 21, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Also, the nature-nurture dichotomy bugs me to no end.
No. Gene. Is. An. Island. Even before you were a zygote, environment influenced your genes. I don’t and can’t see them as separate.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 21, 2008 at 6:06 pm
C.S. Wyatt wrote,
“They believed the child was a burden, and I’m convinced the child could tell.”
I think a child (however “severe” and “non-verbal”) can and would sense this, however little it might be thought possible. A non-verbal child learns to read non-verbal language in others.
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