Research Hit: Your Personality Influences Your Genes - and You May be Able to Control This
An AI tool has identified key hubs of genes that alter their expression to personality but also that some of these may be able to be consciously modified through self-awareness!
Isn’t it the other way around - that genes influence (or define) our personality?!
Yes, that would be logical and what most of us would assume. And most scientists have also thought - until now, that is!
What’s more the insights here could be pretty groundbreaking because of the nature of the identified networks, this could be open to actively changing this ourselves.
Oh, tell me more!
Well, Coral del Val et al. of the University of Granada used a genomic expression dataset of 459 adults and set AI to work on it trying to scour the millions and millions of pieces of data and find useful patterns.
There has been work done on personality and genes and hence the hereditariness of certain personality traits but no work to date on how personality could influence genetic expression. Genetic expression refers to how genes activate or deactivate.
And the results are mightily impressive:
First they identified 4’000 genes that clustered into different modules and were expressed differently in different areas in the brain. Some of these had already been identified. So far so good but that is not the really interesting bit.
What is?
Well, these modules form a functional interaction network that coordinates genetic expression and therefore adaptability to everyday challenges we face and how we (and our bodies) develop.
Oh wow!
But it gets even more interesting. These modules were in turn regulated by only two networks One network regulated emotional reactivity (anxiety, fear, etc.), while the other regulated what a person perceives as meaningful (e.g., production of concepts and language).
And what’s more six genes in these “master control” hubs are highly preserved throughout evolution - suggesting that they are beneficial in regulating all life forms on earth.
But it gets even (even) more interesting
What, there’s more?!
Some of their previous research has found different levels of well being (life satisfaction, mental and physical health) depending on personality - specifically on levels of self-awareness. And these are strongly associated with genetic expression - that is turn influenced by personality.
But remember genetic expression does not change the gene but whether a gene is switched on or not and that is driven by environment (that can include your thoughts, and also food). In this context by your personality. This therefore suggests that you can activate different genes which could be more beneficial to you by focusing on aspects of personality.
Here specifically on the second hub (that they termed the “creative” hub), and governed by self-awareness and transcendence.
The researchers note:
Gene expression networks associated with human personality regulate neuronal plasticity, epigenesis, and adaptive functioning by the interactions of salience and meaning in self-awareness.
In short: focusing on and building self-awareness is likely to trigger a cascade of changes in your genetic expression that will be beneficial to you.
Wow, and wow again - but you have reported on these before haven’t you
Just a few weeks ago we discussed the benefits of transcendence on teenage (and adult) life satisfaction and brain growth. This research would explain how and why - teenagers may be particularly susceptible i.e. with a brain that is reorganising and growing still.
It would also explain the benefits of self-awareness on us human beings, including all forms of meditation.
So working on self-awareness, and transcendence will activate genes that promote wellbeing!
Yup, the researchers do note, as they should, that this needs to be further researched. But very, very promising. And note that this focus on self-awareness may also may have a bunch of other positive benefits - such as in higher performance in all areas in life as well!
Reference
del Val, C., Díaz de la Guardia-Bolívar, E., Zwir, I. et al.
Gene expression networks regulated by human personality
Mol Psychiatry (2024)
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-024-02484-x