ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2018
The impact of environmental interventions among mouse siblings on the heritability and malleability of general cognitive ability.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- The repeatability of cognitive performance: a meta-analysis.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Pooled it
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- Genomic and Gut Microbiome Evaluations of Growth and Feed Efficiency Traits in Broilers.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Evidence for a general cognitive structure in pigeons (Columba livia).Animal cognition · 2024Article
- Unpredictable Mixed-Valence Outcomes Induce a Chronic and Reversible Generalized Anxiety-like Phenotype in Male Mice.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2024Article
- Heritability of cognitive performance in wild Western Australian magpies.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Repeatability and heritability of inhibitory control performance in wild toutouwai (Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Among-individual differences in auditory and physical cognitive abilities in zebra finches.Learning & behavior · 2022Article
- How general is cognitive ability in non-human animals? A meta-analytical and multi-level reanalysis approach.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Predictors of individual variation in reversal learning performance in three-spined sticklebacks.Animal cognition · 2020Article
- Questioning the developmental effects of group size on cognitive abilities.Learning & behavior · 2019Article
- Environmental enrichment, new neurons and the neurobiology of individuality.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2019Review
- Stress hormones, social associations and song learning in zebra finches.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Heritabilities and co-variation among cognitive traits in red junglefowl.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- A distributed brain network predicts general intelligence from resting-state human neuroimaging data.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Measuring and understanding individual differences in cognition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Heritability and correlations among learning and inhibitory control traits.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
General cognitive ability can be highly heritable in some species, but at the same time, is very malleable. This apparent paradox could potentially be explained by gene-environment interactions and correlations that remain hidden due to experimental limitations on human research and blind spots in animal research. Here, we shed light on this issue by combining the design of a sibling study with an environmental intervention administered to laboratory mice. The analysis included 58 litters of four full-sibling genetically heterogeneous CD-1 male mice, for a total of 232 mice. We separated the mice into two subsets of siblings: a control group (maintained in standard laboratory conditions) and an environmental-enrichment group (which had access to continuous physical exercise and daily exposure to novel environments). We found that general cognitive ability in mice has substantial heritability (24% for all mice) and is also malleable. The mice that experienced the enriched environment had a mean intelligence score that was 0.44 standard deviations higher than their siblings in the control group (equivalent to gains of 6.6 IQ points in humans). We also found that the estimate of heritability changed between groups (55% in the control group compared with non-significant 15% in the enrichment group), analogous to findings in humans across socio-economic status. Unexpectedly, no evidence of gene-environment interaction was detected, and so the change in heritability might be best explained by higher environmental variance in the enrichment group. Our findings, as well as the 'sibling intervention procedure' for mice, may be valuable to future research on the heritability, mechanisms and evolution of cognition.This article is part of the theme issue 'Causes and consequences of individual differences in cognitive abilities'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.