Memory Gene?

[Jeff Corey]

According to Newsday, an article in today's Science authored by Dietrich Stephan, demonstrated that a form of the Kibra gene may differentiate between people with better or worse memories.
I don't have access to the article, but the story says that 341 college students memorized a list of words and their recall was tested some time later. The top quarter had one varient of the gene and the bottom quarter, another.
I know it's basically correlational research, but, as TaiChi would say, interesting.

 

[Soapy Sam]

The problem with this sort of correlation always is the removal of other factors. If the wordlist was in Yiddish for example and the top 25% turned out to be students at a Talmud college (if such exist) , could we feel as confident that the gene is responsible? Or would we wonder if possession of the gene is what makes people Jewish?

 

[Jeff Corey]

Sure, there's always the third variable problem, as well as others, in some cases. But some areas are stuck with corellational research because they can't directly manipulate the independent variables of interest.