The Genius in All of Us: New Insights Into Genetics, Talent, and IQ (39 page)

    
Lest anyone think they were living perfectly parallel lives
:
Chen, “Twins Reared Apart.”

    
Otto (left) and Ewald (right)
.

Michael Rennie writes:

Since the sequencing of the human genome there has been an expectation that we will be able to unveil many of the secrets underlying ways in which the human body is put together, the differences that exist between individuals in muscle and bone mass and composition, and how adaptable they are to physical activity. Although there have been some successes in identifying genes that are associated with particular musculoskeletal functions, it seems that, as for many other human attributes, human body size and composition are as much a matter of environment as of natural endowment, with each having about 50% influence. The gentlemen pictured in Fig. 1 [Otto and Ewald] are in fact identical twins who chose to sculpt their bodies by different training regimes to completely different results, in order to pursue athletic careers in distance running and field events. Obviously the scope for environmental effects is large. Most of what I will discuss concerns relatively short-term effects of food and exercise, i.e. those which occur within a time frame of up to 72 h,
and I am going to say very little about alterations of gene transcription, since this has not been the focus of our work until recently. Nevertheless, it did come as a surprise to me and other workers to realize that it was possible to see marked alterations in gene expression within 2 h of finishing a bout of exercise or infusing insulin; given the much slower metabolic rate of human organs compared to that of a rat or a mouse, it was to be expected that these changes would take much longer. (Rennie, “The 2004 G. L. Brown Prize Lecture,” pp. 427–28.)

Art De Vany writes:

It turns out that Otto’s more low intensity stimulation decreased ATP concentrations and activated AMP kinase. This inhibited stimulation of TSC2 so that mTOR-mediated myofibrillar stimulation did not occur. In Ewald’s case, the genes got another signal: high intensity contraction stimulated PKB activity, increasing TSC2 and activating the mTOR signal, resulting in markedly increased myofibrillar protein synthesis.

So, a low intensity signal turns on different genes and signal cascades than a high intensity signal. Low intensity—no muscle protein synthesis. High intensity—markedly increased muscle protein synthesis. Same genes, different signals, different bodies. (De Vany, “Twins.”)

CHAPTER 5:
PRODIGIES AND LATE BLOOMERS

PRIMARY SOURCES

Halberstam, David.
Playing for Keeps
. Broadway Books, 2000.

Hulbert, Ann. “The Prodigy Puzzle.”
New York Times
, November 20, 2005.

Levitin, Daniel J.
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
. Dutton, 2006.

Ma, Marina.
My Son, Yo-Yo
. Chinese University Press, 1996.

Terman, Lewis M. “The Discovery and Encouragement of Exceptional Talent.” Walter Van Dyke Bingham Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, March 25, 1954.

Terman, Lewis M.
Genetic Studies of Genius
. Stanford University Press.

Volume I:
Mental and Physical Traits of a Thousand Gifted Children
(1925).

Volume II:
The Early Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses
(1926).

Volume III:
The Promise of Youth, Follow-up Studies of a Thousand Gifted Children
(1930).

Volume IV:
The Gifted Child Grows Up
(1947).

Volume V:
The Gifted Group at Mid-Life
(1959).

Winner, Ellen. “The origins and ends of giftedness.”
American Psychologist
55, no. 1 (2000): 159–69.

CHAPTER NOTES

    
They called it “hang time
.
”

   The fascination with Jordan’s flight became so deep that after a while, physicists felt compelled to jump in and reassure people that Jordan was not, in fact, defying gravity.

“By bringing his knees up, he’s raising his center of mass relative to his head,” explained Michael Kruger, chairman of physics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. “He does that on his way up. On the way down, of course, he lowers his legs and that lowers his center of mass which is bringing it back to where it normally is, which effectively raises his head relative to the center of mass. The head no longer follows the parabola. The head stays up there at one height. So what you get is during the entire time, the head stays at the same height. The center of mass goes up and down, through gravity and him manipulating his center of mass.

“When we look at each other, we don’t intuitively know where our center of mass is. We fixate on things, like the head. But this really is happening; the head is staying constant for an unnaturally long time because he manipulates his center of mass.” (Grathoff, “Science of Hang Time.”)

  The American Association of Physics Teachers provides this explanation:

How high someone can jump depends on the force used to push on the floor when starting to jump, which in turn depends on the strength and power of the jumper’s leg muscles. The harder and more powerful the jump, the higher and longer the flight. In order to leap four feet into the air, the hang time would be 1.0 seconds. Jordan had a few tricks up his sleeve to make that
hang time seem longer. When he dunked, he held onto the ball a bit longer than most players, and actually placed it in the basket on the way down. He also pulled his legs up as the jump progressed so it appeared that he was jumping higher. But it still all happened in less than one second. (American Association of Physics Teachers, “Slam Dunk Science.”)

    
“pure genius is something very, very rare
”:
Halberstam,
Playing for Keeps
, p. 9.

    
“If Michael Jordan was some kind of genius, there had been few signs of it when he was young
”:
Halberstam,
Playing for Keeps
, p 17.

    
Yo-Yo Ma, on the other hand, showed his stuff from very early on
:
Ma,
My Son, Yo-Yo
.

    
Pablo Casals called him simply “Wonder Boy
”:
Ma,
My Son, Yo-Yo
, p. 80.

    
researchers have discovered that child prodigies and adult superachievers are very often not the same people
.
For every wonder child Yo-Yo Ma who also thrives in adulthood, there is a long list of child prodigies who never become remarkable adult achievers.

   “Most gifted children, even most child prodigies, do not go on to become adult creators,” says Boston College’s Ellen Winner. (Winner, “The origins and ends of giftedness,” pp. 159–69.)

    
At the same time, an equally long list of profound adult achievers manage to attain greatness without first showing any profound abilities as children—a list that includes Copernicus, Rembrandt, Bach, Newton, Kant, da Vinci, and Einstein
.

   This list comes from Malcolm Gladwell, in a talk he gave to the Association for Psychological Science in 2006. (Wargo, “The myth of prodigy and why it matters.”)

San Jose State University psychologist Gregory Feist adds: “Early childhood talent in music by no means is a necessary or a sufficient condition for adult creative achievement. It is often the case that the musically most-accomplished adults do not begin to set themselves apart in any significant way until middle adolescence.” (Feist, “The Evolved Fluid Specificity of Human Creative Talent,” p. 69).

    
Jeremy Bentham began studying Latin at age three
:
Dinwiddy,
Bentham
, p. 11.

    
John von Neumann could divide eight-digit numbers in his head by age six
:
Myhrvold, “John von Neumann.”

    
Seattle’s Adora Svitak began writing stories at age five and published her first book at age seven
:
Bate, “‘Dora the Explorer’ shows pupils the way.”

    
Ellen Winner responded in 2000 that “Ericsson’s research demonstrates the importance of hard work but does not rule out the role of innate ability … [We] conclude that intensive training is necessary for the acquisition of expertise, but
not
that it is sufficient
.
”

   Winner also carefully reviewed now-known key ingredients of early achievement—motivation, independence, high expectations, and family nurturance—and, one by one, hypothesized that each could theoretically be consequences of innate giftedness rather than independent environmental ingredients:

Gifted children have a deep intrinsic motivation to master the domain in which they have high ability, and are almost manic in their energy level … This intrinsic drive is part and parcel of an exceptional, inborn giftedness.

  Parents of gifted children grant their children more than the usual amount of independence. But we do not know whether granting independence leads to high achievement, or whether it is the recognition of the child’s gift that leads to the granting of independence. It is also possible that gifted children are particularly strong willed and single minded and thus demand independence.

  Parents of gifted children typically have high expectations, and also model hard work and high achievement themselves. But it is logically possible that gifted children have simply inherited their gift from their parents, who also happen to be hardworking achievers.

  The families of gifted children are child-centered, meaning that family life is often totally focused on the child’s needs. But the fact that parents spend a great deal of time with their gifted child does not mean that they create the gift. It is likely that parents first notice signs of exceptionality, and then respond by devoting themselves to the development of their child’s extraordinary ability. (Winner, “The origins and ends of giftedness.”)