natselrox wrote:

Federico wrote:.....the show describes the findings, by Skinner and others, that “epigenetic ‘switches’ control the genes themselves, and that these switches can be turned on and off by environmental factors like nutrition and stress. [The program] reports the startling first evidence that this can cause heritable effects in humans.”

natselrox wrote:I have seen the documentary. But you are still not getting the point.

Well, natselrox, if you have seen the documentary as you say, either you were asleep when the paragraph I have enhanced was spoken or you didn't understand it.

Well, Skinner shows the epigenetic effects of a famine on the future generations. I can mention a few other cases which were not mentioned in the documentary, for example, the Dutch Railway Strike that led to a famine and had long lasting effects on the kids who were born to mothers pregnant during that time. The kids were more susceptible to obesity, diabetes etc. And all of these were due to epigenetic causes. The documentary mentions the effects of stress on the mothers pregnant during the 9/11 attacks and the effect on their children. The documentary then explains the mechanism of epigenetic inheritance. And I accept all of that.

But all of these do jack-all to support your claims of 'musical neurones' though.

he Dutch famine of 1944, known as the Hongerwinter ("Hunger winter") in Dutch, was a famine that took place in the occupied northern part of the Netherlands, especially in the densily populated western provinces above the great rivers, during the winter of 1944-1945, near the end of World War II. A total of 18,000 people died during the famine.[1]
This famine was unique as it took place in a modern, developed and literate country, albeit suffering under the privations of occupation and war. The well-documented experience has allowed scientists to measure the effects of famine on human health.
The Dutch Famine Birth Cohort Study, carried out by the departments of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Gynecology and Obstetrics and Internal Medicine of the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, in collaboration with the MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit of the University of Southampton in Britain, found that the children of pregnant women exposed to famine were more susceptible to diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, microalbuminuria and other health problems.(Wiki)

I'll come back to music and heredity. Just start considering music like food: You have it, and your soul grows, you don't have it and your soul shrivels.

And the point of this "copy-paste" from Wikipedia is?

What is a 'soul' that "grows" and "shrivels?" If you're going to make statements like that, please explain what part of the body you're talking about.

Brain man wrote: The cochrane paper you cite in that economist article, was ripped to shreds.

Which one you mean? One of the articles I quoted was authored by G. Cochran and published in The Journal of Biosocial Science. Do you have a reference to the criticisms?

As for: The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event
... if you read the full article (available online), it's a very elegant, methodologically sound study.

Also relevant is the study on rabbis:
Extended Y chromosome haplotypes resolve multiple and unique lineages of the Jewish priesthood
"These results support the hypothesis of a common origin of the CMH [Cohen Modal Haplotype] in the Near East well before the dispersion of the Jewish people into separate communities, and indicate that the majority of contemporary Jewish priests descend from a limited number of paternal lineages."
Full text online.

Elena wrote:
Also relevant is the study on rabbis:
Extended Y chromosome haplotypes resolve multiple and unique lineages of the Jewish priesthood
"These results support the hypothesis of a common origin of the CMH [Cohen Modal Haplotype] in the Near East well before the dispersion of the Jewish people into separate communities, and indicate that the majority of contemporary Jewish priests descend from a limited number of paternal lineages."
Full text online.

It's not a study on rabbis.

... in a Jewish context, "priests" - levites - are members of one subtribe, and the cohanim - those eligible to be high priests - are allegedly the descendants of Aaron - brother of Moses. The role of the priests is pretty much ritual, things in the temple, mostly, altho' a few roles outside of the temple also exist. Mostly, the only role they have today is they have first dibs on aliyahs in the synagogue liturgy. (So, you have to be a descendant of certain Jews to be a priest. And even then, lineages can be disqualified by a variety of ways). Rabbis are not priests. Rabbis are scholars of religious topics, teachers of religious topics, lawyers of religious law, judges of religious law, advisors in religious matters. Anyone, even converts, are eligible to become rabbis. (However, rabbinic studies are demanding.)

just for the record. But yeah, I like for people not to contribute more confusion to whatever matter, even tho' this isn't, strictly speaking, on topic.

Zwaarddijk wrote: just for the record. But yeah, I like for people not to contribute more confusion to whatever matter, even tho' this isn't, strictly speaking, on topic.

Interesting. Seems you've got the message re: language accuracy in this post or this or probably this.

Elena wrote:
Which one you mean? One of the articles I quoted was authored by G. Cochran and published in The Journal of Biosocial Science. Do you have a reference to the criticisms?

It will be that one..Cochrane never did a follow up that i am aware off. No published criticisms that i know off. A bunch of us neuro guys took the paper apart when it came out (mainly me and a neuro postgrad from spain). We did write some stuff up to take it apart. i.e. Dig out lipid pathways, and summaries of the CNS immune defects they were referring to. They guy from spain really went to town on that paper and rejected it, but i thought the overall concept seemed plausible. Especially when i found the lipid pathways leading back to the sphingolipids implicated in autism spectrum.

It wasnt the Ashkenazi IQ aspect that was important about the cochrane paper. Any paper which claims to have dug into the underlying mechanism of increased intelligence has to be closely examined...for ideas if anything. Basically they had two primary mechanisms playing off each other for IQ hikes. Faster membrane turnover due to the brakes being taken off the CNS immune system. The immunity slows down our cognition at the cost of us being protected from diseases..Actually its worth having another look at it just for that aspect alone.

Brain man wrote:

Elena wrote:
Which one you mean? One of the articles I quoted was authored by G. Cochran and published in The Journal of Biosocial Science. Do you have a reference to the criticisms?

It will be that one..Cochrane never did a follow up that i am aware off. No published criticisms that i know off. A bunch of us neuro guys took the paper apart when it came out (mainly me and a neuro postgrad from spain). We did write some stuff up to take it apart. i.e. Dig out lipid pathways, and summaries of the CNS immune defects they were referring to. They guy from spain really went to town on that paper and rejected it, but i thought the overall concept seemed plausible. Especially when i found the lipid pathways leading back to the sphingolipids implicated in autism spectrum.

It wasnt the Ashkenazi IQ aspect that was important about the cochrane paper. Any paper which claims to have dug into the underlying mechanism of increased intelligence has to be closely examined...for ideas if anything. Basically they had two primary mechanisms playing off each other for IQ hikes. Faster membrane turnover due to the brakes being taken off the CNS immune system. The immunity slows down our cognition at the cost of us being protected from diseases..Actually its worth having another look at it just for that aspect alone.

Specific references or evidence would help.

Elena wrote:

Brain man wrote:

Elena wrote:
Which one you mean? One of the articles I quoted was authored by G. Cochran and published in The Journal of Biosocial Science. Do you have a reference to the criticisms?

It will be that one..Cochrane never did a follow up that i am aware off. No published criticisms that i know off. A bunch of us neuro guys took the paper apart when it came out (mainly me and a neuro postgrad from spain). We did write some stuff up to take it apart. i.e. Dig out lipid pathways, and summaries of the CNS immune defects they were referring to. They guy from spain really went to town on that paper and rejected it, but i thought the overall concept seemed plausible. Especially when i found the lipid pathways leading back to the sphingolipids implicated in autism spectrum.

It wasnt the Ashkenazi IQ aspect that was important about the cochrane paper. Any paper which claims to have dug into the underlying mechanism of increased intelligence has to be closely examined...for ideas if anything. Basically they had two primary mechanisms playing off each other for IQ hikes. Faster membrane turnover due to the brakes being taken off the CNS immune system. The immunity slows down our cognition at the cost of us being protected from diseases..Actually its worth having another look at it just for that aspect alone.

Specific references or evidence would help.

Too much of a project as all the stuff we did is archived now.

However its still around in a box somewhere. if you have a line of inquiry focused on any particular aspect of this paper let us know.

Federico wrote:I'll come back to music and heredity. Just start considering music like food: You have it, and your soul grows, you don't have it and your soul shrivels.

Just to try to understand your position a bit better, Frederico, can you tell me how you separate out:

1) Neurons changing as a function of their environment (i.e. through learning, experience, with no genetic change), and
2) Your idea that the epigenetic changes from environmental factors cause a change in the development of neurons.

natselrox wrote:And the point of this "copy-paste" from Wikipedia is?

Oh, you didn't get it? Let me explain it for you in simple terms.
What you quote as an example of interaction between the environment and the Genome/Epigenome complex regulating food processing and the development of Dutch boys exposed to a drastic change in environmental conditions (i.e. starvation), although commendable in principle, is so grossily flawed in substance I couldn't let it pass.
It was not a rail strike but a terrible Hongerwinter or winter's famine in 1944-1945, during the Nazi occupation of Holland, which resulted in disastrous but temporary changes in the physiology of Dutch children.

But wouldn't similar conditions in any part of the world result in the same thing in all children. Isn't that exactly what the problem is with most children in Africa -- malnutrition. It's not something genetic in Dutch children only. If the families were on the border with Belgium, then they would be starving Belgian children. Surely???

Federico wrote:

natselrox wrote:And the point of this "copy-paste" from Wikipedia is?

Oh, you didn't get it? Let me explain it for you in simple terms.
What you quote as an example of interaction between the environment and the Genome/Epigenome complex regulating food processing and the development of Dutch boys exposed to a drastic change in environmental conditions (i.e. starvation), although commendable in principle, is so grossily flawed in substance I couldn't let it pass.
It was not a rail strike but a terrible Hongerwinter or winter's famine in 1944-1945, during the Nazi occupation of Holland, which resulted in disastrous but temporary changes in the physiology of Dutch children.

Some of us prefer to read books, and not Wikipedia.

Matt Ridley, in Nature via Nurture wrote:The famine hypothesis may have even more bizarre implications, as revealed by an "accidental experiment" conducted on a vast scale during the Second World War. It began in September 1944, at a time when Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, who had formerly worked together, were both in captivity. Lorenz was in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp, having just been captured; Tinbergen was about to be released after two years in a German internment camp where he was held hostage under threat of death against the activities of the Dutch resistance. On 17 September 1944, British paratroopers occupied the Dutch city of Arnhem to capture a strategic bridge over the Rhine.

Eight days later, the Germans forced them to surrender, having fought off the ground forces sent to their relief. The Allies then abandoned attempts to liberate Holland until after the winter. The Dutch railroad workers had called a strike to try to prevent German reinforcements from reaching Arnhem. In retaliation, Reichs-kommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart ordered an embargo on all civilian transport in the country. The result was a devastating famine, which lasted for seven months: it was called the hunger winter. More than 10,000 people starved to death. What later caught the attention of medical researchers was the effect that this abrupt famine had on unborn babies. Some 40,000 people were fetuses during the famine, and their birthweight and later health are on record. In the 1960s a team from Columbia University studied the data. They found all the expected effects of malnourished mothers: malformed babies, high infant mortality, and high rates of stillbirth. But they also found that those babies who were in their last trimester of gestation (only) were of low birth weight. These babies grew up normal, but they later suffered from diabetes, probably brought on by the mismatch between their thrifty phenotype and the abundant rich food of the postwar world.

But your audacity is fucking annoying. So don't expect me to reply to your posts from now on.

Agrippina wrote:What is a 'soul' that "grows" and "shrivels?" If you're going to make statements like that, please explain what part of the body you're talking about.

As I will explain in more detail in my answer to Mr.Samsa's queries, from the point of view of developmental cytology and molecular biology, there is little difference between insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, and neurones in brain areas which are responsive to and/or responsible for music.
If we turn that into a metaphor, we may compare the pleasure we get from eating sugar, to the intense satisfaction we may get from listening to or making beautyful music.

Federico wrote:

Agrippina wrote:What is a 'soul' that "grows" and "shrivels?" If you're going to make statements like that, please explain what part of the body you're talking about.

As I will explain in more detail in my answer to Mr.Samsa's queries, from the point of view of developmental cytology and molecular biology, there is little difference between insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, and neurones in brain areas which are responsive to and/or responsible for music.
If we turn that into a metaphor, we may compare the pleasure we get from eating sugar, to the intense satisfaction we may get from listening to or making beautyful music.

So if I eat more sugar I become a better violinist even if my grandfather never practised sufficiently? What happens if I'm diabetic?

natselrox wrote:But your audacity is fucking annoying. So don't expect me to reply to your posts from now on.

It suits me fine, since your contribution to this Thread has been quite limited until now.

Federico wrote:

Agrippina wrote:What is a 'soul' that "grows" and "shrivels?" If you're going to make statements like that, please explain what part of the body you're talking about.

As I will explain in more detail in my answer to Mr.Samsa's queries, from the point of view of developmental cytology and molecular biology, there is little difference between insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, and neurones in brain areas which are responsive to and/or responsible for music.
If we turn that into a metaphor, we may compare the pleasure we get from eating sugar, to the intense satisfaction we may get from listening to or making beautyful music.

aspire1670 wrote:
So if I eat more sugar I become a better violinist even if my grandfather never practised sufficiently? What happens if I'm diabetic?

You are very funny
And the answer to your question is: Diabetes will preclude you from enjoying good music.

Federico wrote:
And the answer to your question is: Diabetes will preclude you from enjoying good music.

I am a type-1 diabetic.
I enjoy all music John Zorn, the Klezmatics, Jewlia Eisenberg, Schoenberg, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Chuck Schuldiner have been involved in.
ergo the music of these musicians is not good.

All those musicians are/were Jews.
Their music is not good (by the previous result).
ergo Jewish musicians suck?

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Federico wrote:I'll come back to music and heredity. Just start considering music like food: You have it, and your soul grows, you don't have it and your soul shrivels.

Just to try to understand your position a bit better, Frederico, can you tell me how you separate out:

1) Neurons changing as a function of their environment (i.e. through learning, experience, with no genetic change), and
2) Your idea that the epigenetic changes from environmental factors cause a change in the development of neurons.

OK, but don't forget we are still on speculative ground, and my name is Federico not Frederico

Mr.Samsa,
I believe we have done some progress together, but there is still some reluctance on your part to accept even as speculative some of my assertions. So, lets try again.

Do you accept the statement that every cell of the human body is endowed with all the paraphernalia that we have inherited from our ancestors? That machinery consisting in all the 20,000-30,000 known coding genes which collectively are called the Genome, as well as all mechanisms known and unknown which are collectively called the Epigenome, and which are essential for the control of genes activity?
Do you agree that humans start their development from a single pluripotential stem cell which then will diffentiate into neurones in the brain, into enterocytes in the gut , into myocytes in the muscles, into insulin-producing cells in the Pancreas, etc?
Then, how does one explain that a neurone in the brain doesn't produce insulin? Presumably because during the differentiation of the stem cell into a neurone and its positioning in the brain (under the control of still little known differentiating factors) the machinery for insulin production remains inactive, while music responsive neurones acquire their specific machinery.
Interestingly, cancerous cells may acquire illicit functions as well as abnormal positioning ( possibly because they have been exposed to environmental tumorigens). And so we may find insulin-producing cells in the intestine.

Now we have to ask ourselves how, when, and why did we acquire the highly complex, system to make and enjoy music, starting with primitive, amusical ancestors, which we can suppose were totally lacking the musical genes as well as their regulatory machinery .
We can suppose that in prehistoric times a mutation occurred in a gene (s) which resulted in some primitive men becoming capable of singing (the machinery to regulate the gene(s) had also to be in place), which gave them an evolutionary advantage.
Indeed, although initially only utilitarian, as a mating call, as a means to alert, transmit information, ask for help and support, singing and later making instrumental music became (in the interplay of music neurones and environmental pressures) more sophisticated and engrossing.
According to Petr Janata, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California Davis campus, music is a force so compelling that it can bind people together, stir memories and lift depression.

Studies with songbirds -- with which man shares the capacity to make and use music -- also have greatly improved our understanding of the development and role of music in our dayly lives.
Sarah Woolley, a professor of behavior neuroscience in the psychology department of Columbia University, studies different species of finches to figure out how the brain recognizes and processes sounds and vocalizations.

<<....finch matures very quickly, so you can actually raise a number of generations in relatively short period in a lab
And we can follow song development. We can follow how the song-learning process takes place, the different phases of song learning. We can draw parallels between those phases of song learning and the development of speech in humans. And we can analyze how the brain changes during that learning.>>

More tomorrow.

Then how do you explain birds (parrots they don't "sing") and dogs that dance when they hear music. (I've seen the youtube videos). Or dogs that bark when they hear music, or howl when they hear violins, or opera? They are amusical according to your hypothesis.