Why identical twins are not equally bright despite common genes
It was one of the rare chances which the scientists could not dream of letting go. It was a golden opportunity, described a report in sciencealert.com, to study monozygotic or identical twins in common parlance, who in their childhood got separated and were raised in completely dissimilar environments – different countries and families. The findings of this research -- published in Personality and Individual Differences – were both interesting and amazing. Twins generally have similar scores in cognitive tests thereby pointing that intelligent quotient is heritable to a tune of 80 per cent but in this particular case, there was a 16-point difference between the twins. While there were several similarities too, the divergences were sharp and stood out. The findings stress on the need to relook at the perception about how much of intelligence is due to our genes and how much comes about because of the environment one is brought up in. Read more