Abstract
The article provides an overview of the results of modern genetic studies of human cognitive abilities. Finding genetic factors, associated with cognitive abilities, will have far-reaching ramifications at all levels of understanding from DNA to brain and to behavior. Despite its complexity, cognitive ability is a reasonable candidate for molecular genetic research because it is one of the most heritable features of behavior. The first attempts to find genetic factors, associated with cognitive abilities, focused on genes, involved in brain development and function, but this direction proved to be unproductive, as it turned out that there are about 18.000 genes, and it was too difficult to detect among them those genes that are involved in cognitive processes. In addition, a considerable number of genetic factors of human traits are single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which are in non-coding DNA regions rather than in traditional genes. The effect of each separate SNP is unimportant, and a clear expression of the general cognitive ability is noticeable only if all the associated SNPs are involved. Currently, over 11,000 such SNPs have been identified, which are uneven in different functional regions of the genome: over 60 % in gene introns, almost 30 % in intergenic DNA regions, about 5 % in gene exons, and about 5 % in transcribed regions (downstream, upstream) and frame regions (UTR'5, UTR'3) of genes. Also there are found 74 SNPs, associated with school achievements. These SNPs are disproportionately located in genes that regulate transcription and alternative splicing of other genes, which are expressed in nerve tissues of the brain during its prenatal development. Finding genetic factors that explain the inheritance of cognitive abilities is important for both science and society. Information about these factors can be used in other fields of human science – human genetics and medicine. It will open up new scientific horizons for education too owing to understanding of the genetic aspects of learning and memory
Highlights
The main postulate of genetics is that all the features of a living organism are determined by its genes, and are formed under the influence of environmental factors
The first attempts to find genetic factors, related to cognitive abilities, focused on genes, involved in the development and functioning of the brain [5]. This direction turned out to be unproductive, because it was deprived of clear hypotheses about which genes can be the real candidate genes of the actual cognitive abilities
The fact is that the human brain expresses 86 % of its identified genome, which is almost 18 thousand genes [6], among which it is too difficult to identify those genes that are involved in cognitive abilities
Summary
The main postulate of genetics is that all the features of a living organism are determined by its genes, and are formed under the influence of environmental factors. Numerous studies have shown that only about half of the total cognitive ability is determined by genes. Cognitive abilities are a set of mental abilities, which includes intelligence, problem solving, planning, abstract thinking, understanding of complex ideas, rapid learning and experiential learning [1]. They are studied by psychogenetics, which in Western scientific sources is mainly called behavioral genetics [2]. The search for genetic factors, related to cognitive abilities, will have far-reaching consequences at all levels of understanding of this phenomenon – DNA, brain and behavior. Understanding genetic mechanisms is relevant for the modernization of Ukrainian education and bringing it closer to international standards
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