Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence

Musical aptitude is commonly measured using tasks that involve discrimination of different types of musical auditory stimuli. Performance on such different discrimination tasks correlates positively with each other and with intelligence. However, no study to date has explored these associations usin...

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Main Authors:	Mosing, Miriam A., Pedersen, Nancy L., Madison, Guy, Ullén, Fredrik
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242709/

id	pubmed-4242709
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-42427092014-11-26 Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence Mosing, Miriam A. Pedersen, Nancy L. Madison, Guy Ullén, Fredrik Research Article Musical aptitude is commonly measured using tasks that involve discrimination of different types of musical auditory stimuli. Performance on such different discrimination tasks correlates positively with each other and with intelligence. However, no study to date has explored these associations using a genetically informative sample to estimate underlying genetic and environmental influences. In the present study, a large sample of Swedish twins (N = 10,500) was used to investigate the genetic architecture of the associations between intelligence and performance on three musical auditory discrimination tasks (rhythm, melody and pitch). Phenotypic correlations between the tasks ranged between 0.23 and 0.42 (Pearson r values). Genetic modelling showed that the covariation between the variables could be explained by shared genetic influences. Neither shared, nor non-shared environment had a significant effect on the associations. Good fit was obtained with a two-factor model where one underlying shared genetic factor explained all the covariation between the musical discrimination tasks and IQ, and a second genetic factor explained variance exclusively shared among the discrimination tasks. The results suggest that positive correlations among musical aptitudes result from both genes with broad effects on cognition, and genes with potentially more specific influences on auditory functions. Public Library of Science 2014-11-24 /pmc/articles/PMC4242709/ /pubmed/25419664 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113874 Text en © 2014 Mosing et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Mosing, Miriam A. Pedersen, Nancy L. Madison, Guy Ullén, Fredrik
spellingShingle	Mosing, Miriam A. Pedersen, Nancy L. Madison, Guy Ullén, Fredrik Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence
author_facet	Mosing, Miriam A. Pedersen, Nancy L. Madison, Guy Ullén, Fredrik
author_sort	Mosing, Miriam A.
title	Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence
title_short	Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence
title_full	Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence
title_fullStr	Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence
title_full_unstemmed	Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence
title_sort	genetic pleiotropy explains associations between musical auditory discrimination and intelligence
description	Musical aptitude is commonly measured using tasks that involve discrimination of different types of musical auditory stimuli. Performance on such different discrimination tasks correlates positively with each other and with intelligence. However, no study to date has explored these associations using a genetically informative sample to estimate underlying genetic and environmental influences. In the present study, a large sample of Swedish twins (N = 10,500) was used to investigate the genetic architecture of the associations between intelligence and performance on three musical auditory discrimination tasks (rhythm, melody and pitch). Phenotypic correlations between the tasks ranged between 0.23 and 0.42 (Pearson r values). Genetic modelling showed that the covariation between the variables could be explained by shared genetic influences. Neither shared, nor non-shared environment had a significant effect on the associations. Good fit was obtained with a two-factor model where one underlying shared genetic factor explained all the covariation between the musical discrimination tasks and IQ, and a second genetic factor explained variance exclusively shared among the discrimination tasks. The results suggest that positive correlations among musical aptitudes result from both genes with broad effects on cognition, and genes with potentially more specific influences on auditory functions.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4242709/
_version_	1613160304912367616

Genetic Pleiotropy Explains Associations between Musical Auditory Discrimination and Intelligence

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