How your DNA makes you a mind reader and why women are better at it
A new study by University of Cambridge scientists found that DNA influences a person’s ability to read someone’s thoughts and emotions from looking at their eyes. The discovery comes twenty years after the same team developed a test that revealed people can rapidly interpret what another person is thinking or feeling from looking at their eyes alone.
Scientists twenty years ago developed the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Test, one of ‘cognitive empathy,’ which showed that humans can interpret another person’s thoughts or feelings by looking at their eyes. The test also revealed that some are better at it than others and that women on average score better on this test than men.
The same team from the University of Cambridge that developed the test now worked with a French, Australian, and Dutch scientists and a genetics company called 23andMe to confirm that a person’s genes influence performance on the Eyes Test. They even went further to identify genetic variants on chromosome 3 in women that are associated with their ability to “read the mind in the eyes.”
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According to a press release, the closest genes in this tiny stretch of chromosome 3 include LRRN1 (Leucine Rich Neuronal 1) which is highly active in a part of the human brain called the striatum, and which has been shown using brain scanning to play a role in cognitive empathy. Consistent with this, genetic variants that contribute to higher scores on the Eyes Test also increase the volume of the striatum in humans, a finding that needs to be investigated further.
“This is the largest ever study of this test of cognitive empathy in the world. This is also the first study to attempt to correlate performance on this test with variation in the human genome. This is an important step forward for the field of social neuroscience and adds one more piece to the puzzle of what may cause variation in cognitive empathy,” Varun Warrier, the Cambridge PhD student who led the study, said.
Previous studies have found that people with autism and anorexia tend to score lower on the Eyes Test. The team found that genetic variants that contribute to higher scores on the Eyes Test also increase the risk for anorexia, but not autism. They speculate that this may be because autism involves both social and non-social traits, and this test only measures a social trait.
The scientists tested 89,000 people across the world, the majority of which were 23andMe customers.
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