Choose your parent right!

Scientific American on genes and brain:

...molecular imprints silence genes; certain imprinted genes are silenced by the mother, whereas others are silenced by the father, and the result is the delicate balance of gene activation that usually produces a healthy baby.

...researchers are also uncovering clues about how our parents’ genes influence our brain—it seems that maternal genes play a more important role in the formation of some brain areas, such as those for language and complex thought, and paternal genes have more influence in regions involved in growing, eating and mating.

In books about creativity you can find a lot of discussion on the topic of parental influences. Unfortunately, this is something we, as children, have no control over. Yet.

New Scientist reports a study that tries to link musical abilities to genes that control social bonding. From the abstract of the study:

Composing, improvising and arranging music are complex creative functions of the human brain, which biological value remains unknown. We hypothesized that practicing music is social communication that needs musical aptitude and even creativity in music. ...Data on creativity in music (composing, improvising and/or arranging music) was surveyed using a web-based questionnaire. Here we show for the first time that creative functions in music have a strong genetic component in Finnish multigenerational families. We also show that high music test scores are significantly associated with creative functions in music

I don't know why, but a genetic connection between a wild fox's or dog's tameness and floppiness of their ears, tickles my curiosity.

Many researchers have noted that beyond tameness, dogs appear to retain certain traits associated with juvenile wolves, especially behavioral traits such as whining, barking, and submissiveness. Russian geneticist Dmitry Belyaev focused on tamability as a guiding characteristic. His idea was not only that early humans would have selected the tamest animals to live with them, but also that selecting for a single trait could give rise to an entire set of changes in form, physiology, and behavior. Belyaev thus launched an experiment that would last longer than his life, seeking to test whether selecting for tameness would indeed produce a set of domesticated traits similar to those seen in dogs (Trut, 1999).

Belyaev chose the silver fox for his experiment; this species is related to the dog, but it is not domesticated. The initial foxes in Belyaev's experiment were not trained in any way, but simply tested for tameness at an early age. Starting at age one month, a human researcher would try to feed and pet the foxes, either alone or in the company of other foxes. The animals' responses varied from aggressive behaviors (such as biting), to indifference, to seeking interaction with the person more than with the other foxes. The tamest foxes were then selected for breeding the next generation, although fresh genes were supplied through continual outbreeding.

Belyaev and his colleagues did indeed create a population of foxes that differed in temperament and behavior from their wild cousins. The foxes changed physically as well, with alterations in coat color appearing as early as the eighth generation—typically a loss of pigment resulting in white patches. The foxes also developed floppy ears and curved tails, mirroring traits seen in dogs as well as other domesticated species (Figure 1).