Heritability of Intelligence

A new study of thousands of people in Europe quantifies the genetic underpinnings of intelligence, finding that some 50 percent of smarts stems from genes.

By Tia Ghose | August 9, 2011

In at least one population, about half of intelligence differences between individuals can be attributed to genetics—specifically, the sum of many small effects from hundreds or even thousands of genes. The study, published today (August 9) in Molecular Psychiatry, is the first to pin down the genetic influence on cognitive abilities.

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