Does anyone know the relevant SNP's involved?

I've read Daniel Tammett book, "Born on a Blue Day" and it was a fascinating read. I also saw a TV documentary of him doing mental arithmetic, and noticed that his index finger was moving back and forth, up and down, as if he were moving something in rows. A year or more later I saw a documentary on Japanese kids who had been trained on the abacus for years, and then the top ones were selected for a special academy that teaches a method called Soroban of doing advanced calculations using very large abacuses, with many rows. The kids train for hours a day, and like playing piano, when they have to do a calculation they have learned to move so many beads back and forth and read off the rows - so much so that they eventually can do the calculations without the physical abacus being present. They do still move their fingers rapidly, as if manipulating the beads though. I though bingo - that's what Daniel Tammett is doing too! IMO, the calendrical calculation however is based on everyone's ability to measure elapsed time - only taken to an extreme - and is different in nature than calculating square roots and such.

Fascinating, as my mother has ASD symptoms and Dyslexia, while 2 female siblings have Dyslexia, and my brother has ASD symptoms and is tone deaf and face blind, and hyperlexic. He was in hospital as a 7 yo for a few weeks and read 27 books, including Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. I have some ASD symptoms myself and was somewhat hyperlexic as a child - I taught myself to read at 4 yo, and was reading an autobiography of Gandhi at 7 yo, and was told I had the reading age of a 12 yo. My son has a diagnosis of ASD and seems to be hyperlexic also, at 2.5 yo he has the vocab of a 5 yo - according to his speech therapist. He also, like my brother, sometimes exhibits Echolalia. He will use phrases out of context, like he said to be the other day, "Dad, I've got bad news or you!", and when I asked what news, he said, "I don't know". My daughter also had some ASD symptoms, but at 8 yo, these seem to have abated, she is also a precocious reader and may be hyperlexic. Another thing my brother would do is remember loads of dialogue from movies, but sometime fail to completely understand the plot, or characters actions or MO in the movie.

BTW, here's a study on Autism and Dyslexia: http://www.ichg2011.org/cgi-bin/ichg11s?abst=autism&sort=ptimes&sbutton=Detail&absno=11433&sid=887748

Maybe some Hippos eat seaweed, and young hippos get washed out to sea on debris, during hurricanes?!

David, Very interesting observation on Glennie. My brother consistently dates women who look similar - so he must has a "type" that he is attracted to - though he can't describe what that is exactly...

Kevin, Fascinating article as usual. Again I'm interested if there are particular SNP's involved in congenital forms of both conditions. The reason being is that my brother exhibits both of these conditions. He can't carry a tune, though he likes music, and has trouble describing what people look like - such as hair or eye color - even of people he knows, and is very bad at recognizing faces of celebs in movies - though he loves movies.

Great article. 23AndMe tests 3 SNP's on the HTR2B gene, they are: rs17586405 A or G rs10194776 C or T rs4973377 A or G Are any of these 3 SNP's relevant to this new finding, if so which and what are the implicated values? Thanks in advance!

But can you reveal what that Finnish SNP was?

One of the differences between higher performing Ireland relative to lower performing Israel, is that Ireland has a significantly higher IQ than Israel - don't discount that ;)

Thorfinn said: Right, that High-IQ Ireland I see 94 for Israel and 93 for Ireland in IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Thorfinn, I'm afraid the joke is on you! Lynn's Magnum Opus has been discredited time and time again, first for sloppy and incorrect reporting of scores, and secondly for seemingly arbitrary additions and subtractions to/from scores. I was referring to PISA IQ - which is based on large population samples, and removes any obvious massaging of data - the results are as follows: 1 Hongkong 104 2 Finland 103 3 Korea (South) 103 4 Netherlands 102 5 Switzerland 102 6 Japan 102 7 Canada 101 8 Belgium 100 9 New Zealand 100 10 Australia 100 11 UnitedKingdom 99 12 Denmark 99 13 Sweden 98 14 Austria 98 15 Czech Republic 98 16 France 98 17 Iceland 98 18 Ireland 98 19 Germany 97 20 Norway 96 21 Slovakia 96 22 Hungary 95 23 Poland 94 24 Spain 94 25 United States 94 26 Latvia 93 27 Luxembourg 93 28 Russia 93 29 Italy 91 30 Portugal 91 31 Greece 89 32 Israel 88 33 Uruguay 86 34 Bulgaria 85 35 Thailand 85 36 Turkey 85 37 Chile 81 38 Mexico 81 39 Argentina 79 40 Indonesia 78 41 Tunisia 76 42 Brazil 75 So while Ireland IQ is not stellar it is significantly higher than Israels at 98 versus 88, with the US at 94 ;)

Thorfinn, I agree that: Israel is perhaps best thought of as a Southern Mediterranean country with a high-performing element, rather than a high-performing economy with a few problems. The same author has this study of National IQ Means Transformed from PISA Scores, which has an interesting table on page 86 (page 17 in the PDF), columns as follows: 1 Country 2 Mean of Rind IQ and PISA IQ 3 Smart Fraction % 4 Gene Frequency M1 5 0.93 X Theoretical GDP (1998) Per Cap $ 6 0.57 X Real GDP (2007) Per Cap $ To which I have added a further column: 7 Performance Over/Under % Giving the following results: [IMG]http://i35.tinypic.com/mauws2.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i35.tinypic.com/mauws2.jpg[/IMG]

Here are those images again: 1. Smart Fraction By IQ 2. Smart Fraction By Performance So looking at #2 above, Israel is performing rather well, relative to its IQ?!

Greg, Are you referring to this paper by Hammer on Homo Habilis in East Asians, based on Chromosome X analysis? Or is there a newer study coming out?!

John said: they needed to have a considerable surplus of big strong men, which means that at least the top segment of the population had to have been well fed. I remember reading somewhere that the Europeans considered the Mongols to be larger and more physically powerful than them. This may be because the Mongols lived a tough physical lifestyle and subsisted on raw meat - stored under their saddle - mostly. Of course it could also be ancient propaganda for why they consistently lost most battles to them.

I know someone with a variant of Bipolar disorder, who suffers from Hypomania which helped him become a hugely successful litigator. Three of his four kids are also highly successful, while one suffers from Bi-Polar disorder.

Also wasn't there a paper mentioned here or elsewhere, which showed that High IQ people with some SNPs linked to Schizophrenia are more creative than average, where low IQ people with these same SNP's suffer from the disease??

Here's another related paper, Bipolar Disorder linked to abnormal Circadian Rhythm

I think there is likely a major role for intrinsic stochastic developmental variation in contributing to phenotypic variance. This IMO is a very important post and point being made, and of course it bodes poorly for would-be genetic engineers, who would like to re-engineer more intelligent phenotypes out of the available genotypes - in that it may never be possible with any certainty to do this.

Henry, Did you actually ever see them dispute the change they received? I've experienced people doing the same - very low IQ farm laborers in Ireland - glancing at their change and poking a coin/note or two and then quickly pocketing it. When asked how they calculate and verify the change so quickly, they invariably answer, "It looks about right" - in other words they aren't actually counting or verifying anything, just going through the motions to try and defray the other person from cheating them?!