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Posts Tagged ‘Natural selection’

Recalling finch beaks using variable decision criteria to learn from whence we came

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Darwin's finches or Galapagos finches. Darwin,...
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In his book, The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner describes the great diversity of finches on the Galapagos Islands – so much diversity – that Darwin himself initially thought the finch variants to be completely different birds (wrens, mockingbirds, blackbirds and “gross-bills”).  It turns out that one of the pivotal events in Charles Darwin‘s life was his work in 1837 with the great ornithologist John Gould who advised that the birds were actually closely related finches and also specific to separate islands!

Fast-forward to 2009, and we are well on our way to understanding how closely related species can, via natural selection of genetic variation, diverge across space and time. The BMP4 and CaM genes, for example, have been associated with beak morphology in what are now known as Darwin’s Finches.  Wonderful indeed, but now consider, for a moment, the variability – not of finch beaks – but of human cognition.

If you’ve ever been a part of a team or group project at work or school, you know that very few people THINK just like you.  Indeed, variability in human cognition can be the source of a lot of frustration.  Let’s face it, people have different experiences stored away (in a highly distributed fashion) in their memory banks, and each persons brain is extensively wired with trillions of synapses.  Of course! nobody thinks like you.  How could such a complex organ function exactly the same way in 2 separate individuals.

Perhaps then, if you were an alien visitor (as Darwin was to the Galapagos Islands) and you watched 5 separate individuals devise a plan to – oh lets just say, to improve healthcare accessibility and affordability – and you measured individuals based solely on their “thinking patterns” you might conclude (as Darwin did) that you were dealing with 5 separate “species”.  Just flip the TV between FOX, CNN, CNBC, CSPAN and MSNBC if you’re not convinced!

However, if you were to take a more in-depth approach and crack open a current issue of a neuroimaging journal – you might come to the exact opposite conclusion.  That’s right.  If you looked at patterns of brain activity and other indirect measures of neural network dynamics (what I casually meant by “thinking patterns” ) you would mostly see conclusions drawn from studies where many individuals are pooled into large groups and then probed for forms of brain activity that are common rather than different.  Most studies today show that humans use a common set of neural systems to perform mental operations (e.g., recalling events and information).  Brain structures including the hippocampus, frontal cortex, thalamus, parietal cortex are all known to be involved in deciding whether or not you have seen something before.  Thus, if you perform an fMRI brain scanning study on individuals and ask them to complete an episodic memory recall task (show them a list of words before scanning and then – when they are in the scanner – ask them to respond to words they remember seeing), you will likely observe that all or most individuals show some BOLD response activity in these structures.

OK great! But can you imagine where we would be if Charles Darwin returned home from his voyage and said, “Oh, just a bunch of birds out there … you know, the usual common stuff … beaks, wings, etc.”  I’d rather not imagine.

Enter Professor Michael Miller and colleagues and their recent paper, “Unique and persistent individual patterns of brain activity across different memory retrieval tasks” [doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.06.033].  This paper looks – not just at the common stuff – but the individual differences in BOLD responses among individuals who perform a number of different memory tasks.  The team reports that there are dramatic differences in the patterns of brain activity between individuals.  This can be seen very clearly in Figure 1 which shows left hemisphere activity associated with memory recall.  The group data (N=14) show nice clean frontal parietal activations – but when the data is broken down on an individual-by-individual basis, you might – without knowing that the all subjects were performing the same recall tasks – suspect that each person was doing or “thinking” something quite different.  The research team then re-scanned each subject several months later and asked whether the individual differences were consistent from person to person. Indeed, the team shows that the 2nd brain scan is much more similar to the first (correlations were about 0.5) and that the scan-rescan data for an individual was more similar than the correlation between any single person and the rest of the group (about 0.25).  Hence, as the authors state, “unique patterns of brain activity persist across different tasks”.

Vive la difference!  Yes, the variability is – if you’re interested in using genetics to understand human history and cognitive development – the really exciting part!  Of course, genetics is not the main reason for the stable individual-to-individual differences in brain activity.  There are likely to be many factors that could alter the neural dynamics of broadly distributed neural networks used for memory recall.  Environment, experience, gender are just a few factors that are known to influence the function of these networks.  The authors reveal that individuals may also differ in the strategies and criteria they use to make decisions about whether they can recall or detect a previously viewed item.  Some people will respond only when they are very certain (high criteria) and others will respond even if they feel only slightly sure they’ve seen an item before (low criteria).  The authors show in Figure 5 that the folks who showed similar decision criteria are more likely to have similar patterns of brain activity.

Perhaps then, the genetic differences that (partially) underlie individual differences in brain activity might relate to personality or other aspects of decision making?  I don’t have a clue, but I do know that this approach – of looking carefully at individual differences – is a step forward to doing what Darwin (and don’t forget John Gould!) is so well known for.  Understand where the variation comes from, and you will understand where you come from!

I will follow this literature more closely in the months to come.

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Look deeply into my eyes and let me see your genes

Posted in OTR, OXTR, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 24, 2009| 1 Comment »

*** PODCAST accompanies this post ***

Nowadays, it seems that genomics is spreading beyond the rarefied realm of science and academia into the general, consumer-based popular culture.  Quelle surprise!?  Yes, the era of the personal genome is close at hand, even as present technology  provides – directly to the general consumer public – a  genome-wide sampling of many hundreds of thousands of single nucleotide variants.   As curious early adopters begin to surf their personal genomic information, one might wonder how they, and  homo sapiens in general, will ultimately utilize their genome information.  Interestingly, some have already adapted the personal genome to facilitate what homo sapiens loves to do most – that is, to interact with one another.  They are at the vanguard of a new and hip form of social interaction known as “personal genome sharing”.  People connecting in cyberspace – via  haplotype or sequence alignment – initiating new social contacts with distant cousins (of which there may be many tens of thousands at 5th cousins and beyond).  Sharing genes that regulate the social interaction of sharing genes, as it were.

A broader view of social genes, within the context of our neo-Darwinian synthesis, however, shows that the relationship between the genome and social behavior can be rather complex.  When genes contribute directly to the fitness of an organism (eg. sharper tooth and claw), it is relatively straightforward to explain how novel fitness-conferring genetic variants increase in frequency from generation to generation.  Even when genetic variants are selfish, that is, when they subvert the recombination or gamete production machinery, in some cases to the detriment of their individual host, they can still readily spread through populations.  However, when a new genetic variant confers a fitness benefit to unrelated individuals by enhancing a cooperative or reciprocally-altruistic form of social interaction, it becomes more difficult to explain how such a novel genetic variant can take hold and spread in a large, randomly mating population.  Debates on the feasibility natural selection acting “above the level of the individual” seem settled against this proposition.  However, even in the face of such difficult population genetic conundrums, research on the psychology, biology and evolutionary genetics of social interactions continues unabated.  Like our primate and other mammalian cousins, with whom homo sapiens shares some 90-99% genetic identity, we are an intensely social species as our literature, poetry, music, cinema, not to mention the more recent twittering, myspacing, facebooking and genome-sharing demonstrate.

Indeed, many of the most compelling examples of genetic research on social interactions are those that reveal the devastating impacts on psychological development and function when social interaction is restricted.  In cases of maternal and/or peer-group social separation stress, the effects on gene expression in the brain are dramatic and lead to long-lasting consequences on human emotional function.  Studies on loneliness by John Cacioppo and colleagues reveal that even the perception of loneliness is aversive enough to raise arousal levels which, may, have adaptive value.  A number of specific genes have been shown to interact with a history of neglect or maltreatment in childhood and, subsequently, increase the risk of depression or emotional lability in adulthood.  Clearly then, despite the difficulties in explaining how new “social genes” arise and take hold in populations, the human genome been shaped over evolutionary time to function optimally within the context of a social group.

From this perspective, a new paper, “Oxytocin receptor genetic variation relates to empathy and stress reactivity in humans” by Sarina Rodrigues and colleagues [doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0909579106] may be of broad interest as a recent addition to a long-standing, but now very rapidly growing, flow of genetic research on genes and social interactions.  The research team explored just a single genetic variant in the gene encoding the receptor for a small neuropeptide known as oxytocin, a protein with well-studied effects on human social interactions.  Intra-nasal administration of oxytocin, for example, has been reported to enhance eye-gaze, trust, generosity and the ability to infer the emotional state of others.  In the Rodrigues et al., study, a silent G to A change (rs53576) within exon 3 of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene is used to subgroup an ethnically diverse population of 192 healthy college students who participated in assessments for pro-social traits such as the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” (RMET) test of empathetic accuracy as well as measures of dispositional empathy.  Although an appraisal of emotionality in others is not a cooperative behavior per se, it has been demonstrated to be essential for healthy social function.  The Rodrigues et al., team find that the subgroup of students who carried the GG genotype were more accurate and able to discern the emotional state of others than students who carried the A-allele.  Such molecular genetic results are an important branching point to further examine neural and cognitive mechanisms of empathy as well as long-standing population genetic concerns of how new genetic variants like the A-allele of rs53576 arose and managed to take-hold in human populations.

Regarding the latter, there are many avenues for inquiry, but oxytocin’s role in the regulation of the reproductive cycle and social behavior stands out as an ideal target for natural selection.  Reproductive and behavioral-genetic factors that influence the ritualized interactions between males and females have been demonstrated to be targets of natural selection during the process of speciation.  New variants can reduce the cross-mating of closely related species who might otherwise mate and produce sterile or inviable hybrid offspring.  So-called pre-mating speciation mechanisms are an efficient means, therefore, to ensure that reproduction leads to fit and fertile offspring.  In connection with this idea, reports of an eye-gaze assessment similar to the RMET test used by Rodrigues et al., revealed that women’s pupils dilate more widely to photos of men they were sexually attracted to during their period of the menstrual cycle of greatest fertility, thus demonstrating a viable link between social preference and reproductive biology.  However, in the Rodrigues et al., study, it was the G-allele that was associated with superior social appraisal and this allele is not the novel allele, but rather the ancestral allele that is carried by chimpanzees, macaques and orangutans.  Therefore, it does not seem that the novel A-allele would have been targeted by natural selection in this type of pre-mating social-interaction scenrio.  Might other aspects of OXTR function provide more insight then?  Rodrigues et al.,  explore the role of the gene beyond the social interaction dimension and note that OXTR is widely expressed in limbic circuitry and also plays a broader modulatory role in many emotional reactivity.  For this reason, they sought to assess the stress responsivity of the participants via changes in heart-rate that are elicited by the unpredictable onset of an acoustic startle.  The results show that the A-allele carriers showed greater stress reactivity and also greater scores on a 12-point scale of affective reactivity.  Might greater emotional vigilance in the face of adversity confer a fitness advantage for A-allele carriers? Perhaps this could be further explored.

Regarding the neural and cognitive mechanisms of empathy and other pro-social traits, the Rodrigues et al., strategy demonstrates that when human psychological research includes genetic information it can more readily be informed by a wealth of non-human animal models.  Comparisons of genotype-phenotype correlations at the behavioral, physiological, anatomical and cellular levels across different model systems is one general strategy for generating hypotheses about how a gene like OXTR mediates and moderates cognitive function and also why it (and human behavior) evolved.  For example, mice that lack the OXTR gene show higher levels of aggression and deficits in social recognition memory.  In humans, genetic associations of the A-allele with autism, and social loneliness form possible translational bridges.  In other areas of human psychology such as in the areas of attention and inhibition, several genetic variants correlate with specific  mental operations and areas of brain activation.  The psychological construct of inhibition, once debated purely from a behavioral psychological perspective, is now better understood to be carried out by a collection of neural networks that function in the lateral frontal cortex as well as basal ganglia and frontal midline.  Individual differences in the activation of these brain regions have been shown to relate to genetic differences in a number of dopaminergic genes, whose function in animal models is readily linked to the physiologic function of specific neural circuits and types of synapses.  In the area of social psychology, where such types of neuroimaging-genetic studies are just getting underway, the use of “hyper-scanning”, a method that involves the simultaneous neuroimaging of two or more individuals playing a social game (prisoners dilemma) reveals a co-activation of dopamine-rich brain areas when players are able to make sound predictions of other participant’s choices.  These types of social games can model specific aspects of reciprocal social interactions such as trust, punishment, policing, sanctions etc. that have been postulated to support the evolution of social behavior via reciprocal altruism.  Similar imaging work showed that intra-nasal administration of oxytocin potently reduced amygdala activation and decreased amygdala coupling to brainstem regions implicated in autonomic and behavioural manifestations of fear.  Such recent examples affirm the presence of a core neural circuitry involved in social interaction whose anatomical and physiological properties can be probed using genetic methods in human and non-human populations.

Although there will remain complexities in explaining how new “social genes” can arise and move through evolutionary space and time (let alone cyberspace!) the inter-flows of genetic data and social psychological function in homo sapiens will likely increase.  The rising tide should inevitably force both psychologists and evolutionary biologists to break out of long-standing academic silos and work together to construct coherent models that are consistent with cognitive-genetic findings as well as population- genetic and phylogenetic data.  Such efforts will heavily depend on a foundation of psychological research into “social genes” in a manner illustrated by Rodrigues et al.

*** PODCAST accompanies this post *** Thanks agian Dr. Rodrigues!!!

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Epigenetic puppetmasters pull strings of cognitive development from a safe distance

Posted in HDACs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 21, 2009| 2 Comments »

Violinist marionette performs
Image by eugene via Flickr

The homunculus (argument) is a pesky problem in cognitive science – a little guy who might suddenly appear when you propose a mechanism for decision making, spontaneous action or forethought  etc. – and would take credit for the origination of the neural impulse.  While there are many mechanistic models of decision making that have slain the little bugger – by invoking competition between past experience and memory as the source of new thoughts and ideas – one must always tread lightly, I suppose, to be wary that cognitive mechanisms are based completely in neural properties devoid of a homuncular source.

Still, the human mind must begin somewhere.  After all, its just a ball of cells initially, and then a tube and then some more folds, layers, neurogenesis and neural migration  etc. before maturing – miraculously – into a child that one day looks at you and says, “momma” or “dada”.  How do these neural networks come into being?  Who or what guides their development toward that unforgettable, “momma (dada)” moment?  A somewhat homuncluar “genetic program” – whose instructions we can attribute to millions of years of natural selection?  Did early hominid babies say “momma (dada)?  Hmmm. Seems like we might be placing a lot of faith in the so-called “instructions” provided by the genome, but who am I to quibble.

On the other hand, you might find that the recent paper by Akhtar et al., “Histone Deacetylases 1 and 2 Form a Developmental Switch That Controls Excitatory Synapse Maturation and Function” [doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0097-09.2009] may change the way you think about cognitive development.  The team explores the function of two very important epigenetic regulators of gene expression – histone deacetylases 1,2 (HDAC1, HDAC2) on the functionality of synapses in early developing mice and mature animals.  By epigenetic, I refer to the role of these genes in regulating chromatin structure and not via direct, site-specific DNA binding.  The way the HDAC genes work is by de-acetylating – removing acetyl groups – thus removing a electrostatic repulsion of acetyl groups (negative charge) on histone proteins with the phosphate backbone of DNA (also a negative charge).  When the histone proteins carry such an acetyl group, they do NOT bind well to DNA (negative-negative charge repulsion) and the DNA molecule is more open and exposed to binding of transcription factors that activate gene expression.  Thus if one (as Akhtar do) turns off a de-acetylating HDAC gene, then the resulting animal has a genome that is more open and exposed to transcription factor binding and gene expression.  Less HDAC = more gene expression!

What were the effects on synaptic function?  To summarize, the team found that in early development (neonatal mouse hippocampal cells) cells where the HDAC1 or 2 genes were turned off (either through pharmacologic blockers or via partial deletion of the gene(s) via lentivirus introduction of Cre recombinase) had more synapses and more synaptic electrical activity than did hippocampal cells from control animals.  Keep in mind that the HDACs are located in the nucleus of the neuron and the synapses are far, far away.  Amazingly – they are under the control of an epigenetic regulator of gene expression;  hence, ahem, “epigenetic puppetmasters”.  In adult cells, the knockdown of HDACs did not show the same effects on synaptic formation and activity.  Rather the cells where HDAC2 was shut down showed less synaptic formation and activity (HDAC1 had no effect).  Again, it is amazing to see effects on synaptic function regulated at vast distances.  Neat!

The authors suggest that the epigenetic regulatory system of HDAC1 & 2 can serve to regulate the overall levels of synaptic formation during early cognitive development.  If I understand their comments in the discussion, this may be because, you don’t necessarily want to have too many active synapses during the formation of a neural network.   Might such networks might be prone to excitotoxic damage or perhaps to being locked-in to inefficient circuits?  The authors note that HDACs interact with MecP2, a gene associated with Rett Syndrome – a developmental disorder (in many ways similar to autism) where neural networks underlying cognitive development in children fail to progress to support higher, more flexible forms of cognition.  Surely the results of Akhtar et al., must be a key to understanding and treating these disorders.

Interestingly, here, the controller of these developmental phenotypes is not a “genetic program” but rather an epigenetic one, whose effects are wide-spread across the genome and heavily influenced by the environment.  So no need for an homunculus here.

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Kicking the “common disease/common variant hypothesis” while its down

Posted in COMT, tagged , , on September 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Digital mock-up of human evolution display for...Image by Colin Purrington via Flickr

Just piling on to the many comments on today’s NY Times profile of David Goldstein who justifiably points out a dearth of whole-genome-snp-scanning success. One interesting debate is whether natural selection had anything to do with expunging the much sought-after (impossible to find) deleterious, disorder-promoting variants (he suggests yes) which means that whilst separate human cultures adapted to separate climate, predators, diets etc. one might expect to identify separate genetic variants that define racial or cultural subgroups (he says no). Huh?

According to the article, Goldstein “says he thinks that no significant genetic differences will be found between races because of his belief in the efficiency of natural selection. Just as selection turns out to have pruned away most disease-causing variants, it has also maximized human cognitive capacities because these are so critical to survival. “My best guess is that human intelligence was always a helpful thing in most places and times and we have all been under strong selection to be as bright as we can be.””

We have a free and open article describing the relationship of a common variant in the COMT gene with human intelligence, which is also supported by a recent meta-analysis on COMT. These findings certainly do not refute Dr. Goldstein’s conclusions, but rather make me wonder why the common valine/methionine variant in COMT might exert a tiny, but measurable, effect on intelligence. Balancing selection possibly ?

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