This article is an editorial introduction to the Research Topic Perspective Taking: building a neurocognitive framework for integrating the “social” and the “spatial”. In part, this overview looks at some of the previous articles in this research topic (of which there are many) and partly it raises questions and directions for future research.

Several articles from the series are linked to below.

Full Citation: 
Hamilton AFC, Kessler K, and Creem-Regehr SH. (2014, Jun 11). Perspective taking: building a neurocognitive framework for integrating the “social” and the “spatial.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience; 8:403. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00403

Perspective taking: building a neurocognitive framework for integrating the “social” and the “spatial”

Antonia F. de C. Hamilton [1], Klaus Kessler [2] and Sarah H. Creem-Regehr [3]

1. Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
2. Aston Brain Centre, School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
3. Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

From carrying a table to pointing at the moon, interacting with other people involves spatial awareness of one's own body and the other's body and viewpoint. In the past, social cognition has often focused on tasks like belief reasoning, which is abstracted away from spatial and bodily representations. There is also a strong tradition of work on spatial and object representation which does not consider social interactions. The 24 papers in this research topic represent the growing body of work which links the spatial and the social. The diversity of methods and approaches used here reveal that this is a vibrant and growing research area which can tell us more than the study of either topic in isolation.

Online mental transformations of spatial representations are often believed to rely on action simulation and other “embodied” processing and three papers in the current research topic provide new evidence for this process. Surtees and colleagues reveal that embodied egocentric transformations are used for visual as well as for spatial perspective taking, extending the generality of the embodied processing principle (Surtees et al., 2013). Braithwaite et al.'s contribution distinguishes between embodied and disembodied body-related hallucinations, showing that only the latter speeds up perspective taking (Braithwaite et al., 2013). Gardner and colleagues also highlight distinct processing routes towards perspective taking outcomes, where some individuals use embodied- while others use abstract (unembodied) calculation strategies (Gardner et al., 2013).

Several of the papers in this research topic have a focus on action systems in perspective taking. Creem-Regehr et al. analyze the literature on human judgments of other's affordances and how this relates to spatial perspective taking, concluding that these are complementary processes that work to inform understanding of another's behavior (Creem-Regehr et al., 2013). Maguinness et al. look at how observing another's action of lifting influences the discrimination of the weight of the objects lifted, and how this is modulated by age (Maguinness et al., 2013). Pezzulo et al. propose that that sensorimotor representations are recalibrated in social contexts to create shared action spaces serving joint action or more generally, social interaction (Pezzulo et al., 2013). Furlanetto et al. present a study examining the role of both gaze and action on perspective taking, finding the intriguing result that when gaze and action intention conflict, spontaneous perspective taking is increased (Furlanetto et al., 2013). Together, these papers suggest that perception, action and spatial processing all interact with and contribute to social cognition.

Direct interactions between spatial factors and social factors can be seen in a variety of domains, including emotional stimuli such as threat and pain. Takahashi et al. use virtual reality to show that potentially threatening objects are perceived as closer to the participant (Takahashi et al., 2013). Clements-Stephens et al. investigate the influence of the presence of an agent and the role of social skills on spatial perspective taking, finding a complex relationship among tasks, targets, and context (Clements-Stephens et al., 2013). Finally, the impact of perspective taking on observation of other's pain is examined by Canizales et al, finding both subjective evaluation and neural somatosensory responses are modulated by the perspective taken (Canizales et al., 2013).

The relevance of social and visuospatial perspective taking for successful communication is emphasized in five contributions in this research topic. Focusing on the integration of action- and spatial- perspective taking, Beveridge and Pickering propose that alignment of spatial perspectives may serve as a prerequisite for action language simulations (Beveridge and Pickering, 2013), in which language users adopt a particular action-perspective or frame-of-reference (FOR). Johannsen and De Ruiter show that priming of a relative FOR can dominate an a priori preference for an intrinsic FOR in communication, while communicative success is predicted by the amount to which interlocutors adapt to each other's strategies—whatever these are (Johannsen and Ruiter, 2013). De Boer and colleagues approach the question of communicative success from the angle of individual traits and report that motivational as well general-purpose cognitive abilities play a crucial role (De Boer et al., 2013). The flexibility of perspective taking in communication is further highlighted by Galati and Avraamides who show that people weigh multiple cues (including social ones) to consider the relative difficulty of perspective-taking for each partner, and adapt behavior to minimize collective effort (Galati and Avraamides, 2013). In this context cultural background could make a difference. Wu and colleagues report that Westerners and East-Asians differ in their strategies of controlling ego- vs. other-centred perspective taking outcomes but are similar in their immediate (egocentric) integration of communication context (Wu et al., 2013).

Developmental and neuroscientific approaches are also important in understanding perspective taking. New data from Hirai and colleagues shows that people with William syndrome find it hard to perform a level 2 visual perspective taking (VPT2) task, and this may be due to difficulties in spatial processing of body postures (Hirai et al., 2013). These data complement the review from Pearson et al. which shows that children with autism also find these VPT2 tasks hard (Pearson et al., 2013). Though Williams syndrome and autism are sometimes considered to have opposite effects on social cognition, here the intersection of spatial and social processing seems to be difficult for both populations. Moll et al. argue against the traditional view that VPT is simpler than cognitive perspective taking (theory of mind) and suggest that social coordination and communication occurs developmentally prior to full VPT abilities (Moll and Kadipasaoglu, 2013). This view contrasts with the paper from Wheatley and colleagues which suggests that in human evolution, brain systems for spatial processing have been repurposed for social cognition (Parkinson and Wheatley, 2013). Finally, Schurz and colleagues report a meta-analysis of fMRI data showing that perspective taking and theory of mind engage overlapping brain regions (Schurz et al., 2013). Together, these studies show clear links between spatial and social processing, and the question of which is “primary” may become an important debate in the future.

Finally, advances in our experimental data need to be interpreted in a solid theoretical framework. Several rival theories are available. Gross and Profitt make the claim that social connections can modulate participant's perception of space (Gross and Proffitt, 2013). Sun and Wang consider how both spatial and social problems can be conceptualized in terms of different frames of reference, and can be broken down to similar low-level components (Sun and Wang, 2014). May and Wendt evaluate theoretical accounts of perspective taking with a focus on two different tasks that require laterality judgments (May and Wendt, 2013). Limanowski and Blankenburg take a very different approach, providing an account of the experience of “self” in terms of the free energy principle that a brain functions to minimize surprise (Limanowski and Blankenburg, 2013).

Overall, the variety of papers in this research topic reflect the diversity and dynamism of the field. Recognition of the importance of studying spatial and social information processing in the same framework has come from many angles. Future studies can examine how these different types of task can scaffold each other and interact, possibly in an embodied fashion, to enable humans to cooperate and engage in a social space.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

References

• Beveridge, M. E. L., and Pickering, M. J. (2013). Perspective taking in language: integrating the spatial and action domains. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:577. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00577 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Braithwaite, J. J., James, K., Dewe, H., Medford, N., Takahashi, C., and Kessler, K. (2013). Fractionating the unitary notion of dissociation: disembodied but not embodied dissociative experiences are associated with exocentric perspective-taking. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:719. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00719  Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Canizales, D. L., Voisin, J. I. A., Michon, P.-E., Roy, M.-A., and Jackson, P. L. (2013). The influence of visual perspective on the somatosensory steady-state response during pain observation. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:849. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00849 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Clements-Stephens, A. M., Vasiljevic, K., Murray, A. J., and Shelton, A. L. (2013). The role of potential agents in making spatial perspective taking social. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:497. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00497 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Creem-Regehr, S. H., Gagnon, K. T., Geuss, M. N., and Stefanucci, J. K. (2013). Relating spatial perspective taking to the perception of other's affordances: providing a foundation for predicting the future behavior of others. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:596. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00596 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• De Boer, M., Toni, I., and Willems, R. M. (2013). What drives successful verbal communication? Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:622. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00622 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Furlanetto, T., Cavallo, A., Manera, V., Tversky, B., and Becchio, C. (2013). Through your eyes: incongruence of gaze and action increases spontaneous perspective taking. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:455. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00455 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Galati, A., and Avraamides, M. N. (2013). Flexible spatial perspective-taking: conversational partners weigh multiple cues in collaborative tasks. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:618. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00618 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Gardner, M. R., Brazier, M., Edmonds, C. J., and Gronholm, P. C. (2013). Strategy modulates spatial perspective-taking: evidence for dissociable disembodied and embodied routes. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:457. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00457 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Gross, E. B., and Proffitt, D. (2013). The economy of social resources and its influence on spatial perceptions. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:772. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00772 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Hirai, M., Muramatsu, Y., Mizuno, S., Kurahashi, N., Kurahashi, H., and Nakamura, M. (2013). Developmental changes in mental rotation ability and visual perspective-taking in children and adults with Williams syndrome. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:856. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00856 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Johannsen, K., and Ruiter, J. P. De. (2013). Reference frame selection in dialog: priming or preference? Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:667. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00667 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Limanowski, J., and Blankenburg, F. (2013). Minimal self-models and the free energy principle. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:547. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00547 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Maguinness, C., Setti, A., Roudaia, E., and Kenny, R. A. (2013). Does that look heavy to you? Perceived weight judgment in lifting actions in younger and older adults. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:795. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00795 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• May, M., and Wendt, M. (2013). Visual perspective taking and laterality decisions: Problems and possible solutions. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:549. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00549 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Moll, H., and Kadipasaoglu, D. (2013). The primacy of social over visual perspective-taking. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:558. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00558 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Parkinson, C., and Wheatley, T. (2013). Old cortex, new contexts: re-purposing spatial perception for social cognition. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:645. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00645 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Pearson, A., Ropar, D., and Hamilton, A. F. D. C. (2013). A review of visual perspective taking in autism spectrum disorder. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:652. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00652 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Pezzulo, G., Iodice, P., Ferraina, S., and Kessler, K. (2013). Shared action spaces: a basis function framework for social re-calibration of sensorimotor representations supporting joint action. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:800. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00800 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Schurz, M., Aichhorn, M., Martin, A., and Perner, J. (2013). Common brain areas engaged in false belief reasoning and visual perspective taking: a meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:712. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00712 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Sun, Y., and Wang, H. (2014). Insight into others' minds: spatio-temporal representations by intrinsic frame of reference. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 8:58. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00058 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Surtees, A., Apperly, I., and Samson, D. (2013). The use of embodied self-rotation for visual and spatial perspective-taking. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:698. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00698 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Takahashi, K., Meilinger, T., Watanabe, K., and Bülthoff, H. H. (2013). Psychological influences on distance estimation in a virtual reality environment. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:580. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00580 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text
• Wu, S., Barr, D. J., Gann, T. M., and Keysar, B. (2013). How culture influences perspective taking: differences in correction, not integration. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 7:822. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00822 Pubmed Abstract | Pubmed Full Text | CrossRef Full Text

Here are several of the articles from this topic section, arranged by newest at the top (I think). There are two more pages worth of older articles here (scroll down).

Insight into others’ minds: spatio-temporal representations by intrinsic frame of reference

Yanlong Sun and Hongbin Wang

Hypothesis & TheoryRecent research has seen a growing interest in connections between domains of spatial and social cognition. Much evidence indicates that processes of representing space in distinct frames of reference (FOR) contribute to basic spatial abilities as ...
Published on 14 February 2014 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00058

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Developmental changes in mental rotation ability and visual perspective-taking in children and adults with Williams syndrome

Masahiro Hirai, Yukako Muramatsu, Seiji Mizuno, Naoko Kurahashi, Hirokazu Kurahashi and Miho Nakamura

Original ResearchWilliams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder caused by the partial deletion of chromosome 7. Individuals with WS have atypical cognitive abilities, such as hypersociability and compromised visuospatial cognition, although the mechanisms underlying ...
Published on 11 December 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00856

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The influence of visual perspective on the somatosensory steady-state response during pain observation

Dora Linsey Canizales, Julien IA Voisin, Pierre-Emmanuel Michon, Marc-André Roy and Philip L. Jackson

Original ResearchThe observation and evaluation of other's pain activate part of the neuronal network involved in the actual experience of pain, including those regions subserving the sensori-discriminative dimension of pain. This was largely interpreted as ...
Published on 09 December 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00849

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How culture influences perspective taking: differences in correction, not integration

Shali Wu, Dale J Barr, Timothy Matthew Gann and Boaz Keysar

Original ResearchIndividuals from East Asian (Chinese) backgrounds have been shown to exhibit greater sensitivity to a speaker's perspective than Western (US) participants when resolving referentially ambiguous expressions. We show that this cultural difference ...
Published on 02 December 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00822

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Shared action spaces: a basis function framework for social re-calibration of sensorimotor representations supporting joint action

Giovanni Pezzulo, Pierpaolo Iodice, Stefano Ferraina and Klaus Kessler

Hypothesis & TheoryThe article explores the possibilities of formalizing and explaining the mechanisms that support spatial and social perspective alignment sustained over the duration of a social interaction. The basic proposed principle is that in social contexts the ...
Published on 26 November 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00800

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Does that look heavy to you? Perceived weight judgment in lifting actions in younger and older adults

Corrina Maguinness, Annalisa Setti, Eugenie Roudaia and Rose Anne Kenny

Original ResearchWhen interpreting other people’s movements or actions, observers may not only rely on the visual cues available in the observed movement, but they may also be able to ‘put themselves in the other person’s shoes’ by engaging brain systems involved in ...
Published on 25 November 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00795

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The economy of social resources and its influence on spatial perceptions

Elizabeth Blair Gross and Dennis Proffitt

ReviewSurvival for any organism, including people, is a matter if resource management. To ensure survival, people necessarily budget their resources. Our spatial perceptions contribute to resource budgeting by scaling the environment to our available ...
Published on 19 November 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00772

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The use of embodied self-rotation for visual and spatial perspective-taking

Andrew David Ridley Surtees, Ian A Apperly and Dana Samson

Original ResearchPrevious research has shown that calculating if something is to someone’s left or right involves a simulative process recruiting representations of our own body in imagining ourselves in the position of the other person (Kessler & Rutherford, ...
Published on 05 November 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00698

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Common brain areas engaged in false belief reasoning and visual perspective taking: a meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies

Matthias Schurz, Markus Aichhorn, Anna Martin and Josef Perner

Original ResearchWe performed a quantitative meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies to identify brain areas which are commonly engaged in social and visuo-spatial perspective taking. Specifically, we compared brain activation found for visual-perspective ...
Published on 01 November 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00712

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Fractionating the unitary notion of dissociation: disembodied but not embodied dissociative experiences are associated with exocentric perspective-taking

Jason Braithwaite, Kelly James, Hayley Dewe, Nick Medford, Chie Takahashi and Klaus Kessler

Original ResearchIt has been argued that hallucinations which appear to involve shifts in egocentric perspective (i.e., the out-of-body experience: OBE) reflect specific biases in exocentric perspective-taking processes. Via a newly devised perspective-taking task, ...
Published on 30 October 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00719

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Reference frame selection in dialog: priming or preference?

Katrin Johannsen and Jan P. De Ruiter

Original ResearchWe investigate effects of priming and preference on frame of reference (FOR) selection in dialogue. In a first study, we determine FOR preferences for specific object configurations to establish a baseline. In a second study, we focus on the ...
Published on 16 October 2013 | Front. Hum. Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00667

This is a brief and basic article, but the idea behind it, that we need to stop distinguishing between biological and social (especially as causes in dysfunctional behavior), is spot on - and I really like the term they mention, “neuropsychosocial.”

Why ‘Nature Versus Nurture’ Often Doesn’t Matter

By Michael White • August 22, 2014


(Photo: abstract/Shutterstock)
Sometimes it just doesn’t make any sense to try to separate the social and the biological.
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Every Friday this month we’re taking a look at the relationship between the social and the biological—specifically, how and why the former becomes the latter. Check back next week for the final installment.

When it comes to understanding ourselves, we tend to be splitters: mind and body, nature and nurture, or genes and environment. We take such a split for granted when we ask how the social becomes biological, but sometimes it’s not so useful to dichotomize the world into society and biology. Instead of looking for distinct social and biological influences (and believing that we can change one but not the other), we should recognize that the factors that drive our social behavior can, like a Zen koan, be two things at once.

Take the case of teen alcohol abuse. In a study published last week, an international team of researchers reported the “neuropsychosocial” factors that identify teens who are likely to abuse alcohol. The word “neuropsychosocial” does away with the common nature/nurture divide, and so did the researchers. Rather than asking whether teens abuse alcohol because of social influences or innate biology, the scientists looked at those variables that could be measured, regardless of whether the variables were social, biological, or a mix of both.

The study is part of a long-term European project called IMAGEN, established to understand the “biological and environmental factors that might have an influence on mental health in teenagers.” The project enrolled 2,000 14-year-olds, from whom were collected several types of data, including personal histories, psychological assessments of behavior, brain images, and genetic data. The researchers asked theses teens about their alcohol consumption at the beginning of the study, and then again at age 16. Armed with this data and a relatively large sample size, the scientists set out to answer the question: What neuropsychosocial factors identify teens who abuse alcohol?

In one analysis, the researchers looked for the factors that identified “current” drinkers, 14-year-olds who were already abusing alcohol when the study data were collected. They compared “binge drinkers” (defined as having been drunk at least three times by age 14) to non-drinkers (teens who drank no more than twice before age 16). In a second analysis, they attempted to identify future alcohol abusers—teens who were not drinking at age 14, but went on to get drunk multiple times by age 16. For each of these analyses, they built a computer model that used the measured neuropsychosocial variables to classify teens as drinkers or non-drinkers. The first model correctly identified 82 percent of current binge-drinking teens and 89 percent of non-drinking teens. The second model, predicting future drinkers, didn’t fare quite as well: 66 percent of drinkers and 73 percent of non-drinkers were correctly classified.

The most important identifying factors of current and future alcohol abusers were an inseparable mix of the social and the biological. A look at those factors shows how teasing out distinct social and biological causes would be an analytical nightmare: the different genetic, neurological, and life history variables are linked together in a thicket of feedback connections. For example, a history of romantic or sexual relationships strongly predicted current and future binge drinking behavior. But teen sexual behavior is surely influenced by other variables the researchers measured, like personality (which has a substantial genetic component), and “reward anticipation” or “emotional reactivity,” which were measured using brain imaging. It’s important to keep in mind that the study was not designed to discover which factors cause teen drinking, a much more difficult task. Instead, the researchers focused on what they could measure—an approach that, while it has its limits, is one of science’s most successful strategies.

What are the neuropsychosocial factors that best identify current and future teen drinkers? Some predictive traits include the volume and activity level of certain brain areas: “Future binge drinkers had reduced grey matter volume but increased activity when receiving a reward in the superior frontal gyrus compared to controls.” A personality trait characterized by “searching for, and feeling rewarded by, novel experiences” predicts both current and future teen drinkers. Other factors, like disruptive family events and more developed pubertal status identify current (but not future) drinkers, while “anxiety sensitivity” predicts only future drinkers. Notably, one set of factors that are not very predictive are specific genetic variants associated with alcohol dependence. This isn’t surprising because the individual effect of any one gene on a behavior like alcohol abuse is likely to be small.

With these results, we can we say about the biological basis for the social phenomenon of teen alcohol abuse? Not much more than, “it’s complicated.” And anyway, framing the question like this is a mistake.

We often approach a social problem by splitting it into its social and biological root causes, and assuming that we can change the social ones while working around the supposedly irreversible biological ones. But when it comes to human behavior, this is often not very useful or informative. As the authors write, their data “speak to the multiple causal factors for alcohol misuse,” and, in fact, any one variable, taken in isolation, had a small influence in their study. The predictive power of their computer model came from combining variables that were measurable—regardless of whether they could be neatly categorized as social or biological—into a single risk profile. This profile offers clues for how to find and help at-risk teens, and the most effective interventions may turn out to have little to do with directly treating some key social or biological cause of alcohol abuse. As we think about the connection between our social behavior and our biology, we should, like good scientists, be pragmatic, and abandon the distinction between society and biology when it’s not useful.



Michael White is a systems biologist at the Department of Genetics and the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he studies how DNA encodes information for gene regulation. He co-founded the online science pub The Finch and Pea. Follow him on Twitter @genologos.

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Michael White - How and Why Does the Social Become Biological?

This is a cool article from Pacific Standard. While this article focuses on math and reading, one of the clearest examples of the social becoming biological is attachment theory, which explains how relational experience becomes encoded in brain architecture and function.

How and Why Does the Social Become Biological?

By Michael White • August 01, 2014

(Photo: Syda Productions/Shutterstock)

To get closer to an answer, it’s helpful to look at two things we’ve taught ourselves over time: reading and math.
•
Every Friday this month we’ll be taking a look at the relationship between the social and the biological—specifically, how and why the former becomes the latter. Check back each week for a new installment.

It’s one of the most irresistible and controversial questions in science: “How and why does the social become biological?” The classic mind-body split is something we feel intuitively, a distinction between our “biology”—our anatomy or our physical health—and our social, decision-making minds. So it can be jarring to hear claims like this: “People differ in their intelligence, personality, and behavior, and a century of research in behavioral genetics leaves little doubt that some of this variation is caused by differences in their genomes.” No matter where we look, we always find the influence of genetics—the social is never entirely free of the biological. But what does it really mean to say that social or mental traits are influenced by genes?

Consider two traits that didn’t evolve “naturally,” but rather were completely invented by humans: the ability to read and do mathematics. Last month, a consortium of scientists sponsored by the Wellcome Trust published a study showing that “the correlation between reading and mathematics ability at age twelve has a substantial genetic component.” In other words, reading and math abilities aren’t merely the result of a decision to work hard at them, or an opportunity to learn; they also depend on DNA.

In one sense, this is trivially obvious. The reason that children learn to read and chimpanzees don’t has nothing to do with the chimps’ lack of educational opportunities; it’s entirely genetic. The physical nature of our brains allows us to develop mental skills that are hopelessly out of reach for other animals.

But when we say a mental trait is influenced by genetics, we clearly mean more than that; we’re also making a statement about the role of genetic differences among people. Learning to read and do math involves some very complex brain biology. New links are made between different specialized areas of the brain, and old parts are re-purposed to engage in something that human brains didn’t do until relatively recently. All of this brain rewiring depends intimately on the chemistry of our neural cells, chemistry that is subtly altered by thousands of genetic differences that change the properties of the molecules involved. Unlike the precision engineering that goes into the latest Intel chip, the human brain’s process tolerances are rather wide—nearly all of our molecular parts show some variation among the human population.

Genetic variation is an unavoidable and central fact of biology, and it is at the heart of the relationship between the social and the biological. There never was a master copy of the human genome; species nearly always exist as populations of genetically varied individuals. These genetic distinctions affect every chemical process in our cells, and because absolutely nothing we do happens without some cell chemistry, everything about us is potentially influenced by genetic variation.

The Wellcome Trust researchers studied the influence of genetic variation on math and reading skills, and the correlation between them. Using data collected from nearly 3,000 sets of twins who had taken standard reading and math tests, they used two methods to examine the role of genetics.

In the first method, they searched directly for an association between a specific DNA difference and scores on tests for math or reading. The idea behind this is fairly simple: Consider a place in the human genome where people differ—some people may have the chemical letter “A,” while others have “G.” Do people with an “A” have, on average, higher test scores than those with a “G?” You repeat this test for thousands or millions of different places in the genome and find the DNA differences with the strongest association. In practice, scientists don’t merely compare the averages of “A” versus “G”; they use a more powerful statistical procedure, but the point is the same: to find specific genetic variants that correlate with differences in test scores.

The second approach, using the resemblance between twins, is more indirect—it doesn’t involve knowing any of the actual DNA differences involved. Since twins share a common family environment, but identical twins are closer genetically than fraternal twins, it’s possible to quantify the genetic and environmental influences on a trait without saying specifically what those influences are.

From these analyses, the researchers came away with three big results that nicely illustrate what it means to say that a behavioral or mental trait has a genetic component. First, the twin analysis showed that genetics explains many of the differences in reading and math test scores in the studied population. But the researchers were unable to find any reproducible association between any specific DNA difference and reading and math ability, suggesting that the total genetic effect is the cumulative result of small changes in many different genes. And finally, they found that not only were reading and math scores influenced by genetics, but also that the correlation between reading and math scores showed a strong genetic influence, suggesting that these skills are influenced by “generalist genes.”

What is a “generalist gene”? The idea, proposed years ago by Robert Plomin, one of the study authors, and Yulia Kovas, is that many of the genes involved in cognitive processes don’t have highly specialized roles limited to one part of the brain. Instead, each generalist gene influences many different brain processes, and conversely, each brain process is the combined result of many different genes. Hence, common genetic variation in any one gene will have only a small effect, but on many different traits at the same time.

Importantly, genetic studies like this one also say something about the importance of the environment. The authors argue that “our results highlight the potential role of the learning environment in contributing to differences in a child’s cognitive abilities at age twelve.” They’re suggesting that when a child’s reading and math abilities—which should be correlated—diverge from each other, there is an opportunity to make a productive change in the learning environment.

Genetic variation influences every cellular process, and everything we do depends in some way on the processes in our cells; ultimately, the social and the biological are inseparable.

~ Michael White is a systems biologist at the Department of Genetics and the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he studies how DNA encodes information for gene regulation. He co-founded the online science pub The Finch and Pea. Follow him on Twitter @genologos.

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