SCIENCE AT THE EDGE SEMINAR SERIES

Interdisciplinary Physics Seminar

Friday, 05 October 2012 at 11:30am

Room 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Bldg.

Refreshments at 11:15

Speaker: Stephen Hsu
         Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies
         Michigan State University

Title:   Genetic Architecture of Intelligence

Abstract:

How do genes affect cognitive ability or other human quantitative traits such
as height?  I begin with a brief review of psychometric measurements of
intelligence, introducing the idea of a "general factor" or g score. The main
results concern the stability, validity (predictive power), and heritability
of adult g.  Next, I discuss ongoing Genome Wide Association Studies which
investigate the genetic basis of intelligence.  Due mainly to the rapidly
decreasing cost of sequencing, it is likely that within the next 10 years we
will identify genes which account for a significant fraction of total IQ
variation - in the case of height we are well along the way towards a similar
goal.  Finally, I describe some preliminary results on the underlying genetic
architecture of height and intelligence.