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---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Study links symmetrical bodies, high IQs ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1997 Nando.net Copyright 1997 Scripps-McClatchy Western ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (August 5, 1997 11:51 a.m. EDT) -- Body symmetry and intelligence go hand in hand, says a team of University of New Mexico researchers in a study that may explain why some people are smarter than others. Biologists Bryant Furlow, Tara Armijo-Prewitt and Randy Thornhill, along with psychologist Steven Gangestad, measured the bodies and tested the brains of over 200 UNM undergraduates. Students' with more closely matched right and left side body parts tended to score higher on IQ tests than did students with asymmetrical bodies. With the findings, published in a June scientific journal, the researchers are challenging traditional assumptions about intelligence. It has been widely assumed that the heritability of IQ is tied to genes that transfer intelligence from parent to child. This has led some scientists to believe that IQ is fixed at the moment of conception and can't be improved by environmental changes like better schooling, better parenting and better health care. "This assumption," the UNM study says, "has led to claims that the improvement of developmental or educational environments may be a futile exercise because relatively low IQs are the "genetic destiny' of low-scoring individuals." The UNM team took a closer look at the IQ puzzle and came up with a more complex mechanism for inheriting intelligence. "Reading through the scientific literature on IQ, we realized that a lot of IQ researchers are assuming that there is an "IQ gene,"' said Armijo-Prewitt. "But genes' effects can be quite indirect. If that's the case, there is no "genetic destiny' as far as IQ is concerned." The UNM group argued that the genes which determine intelligence may not be coded for IQ at all -- but instead are tied to an individual's genetic resistance to environmental stress -- the same stresses that can cause crookedness in the body. Some people's genes appear to provide better protection against parasites, pollution and disease -- environmental stresses that can damage or distort both the body and the mind, the UNM study says. Indirectly, the researchers concluded, stress-resistance genes allow some people to have higher IQs. And by removing the environmental stresses, they said, the genetically vulnerable can have high IQs as well. "Even people with genetic vulnerabilities to developmental stress can wind up with high IQs," said Armijo-Prewitt, "if we take care to create protected developmental environments." According to the June 26 issue of Nature magazine, the study "seems to break new ground" in the intelligence debate by tying together both genetic and environmental factors. The magazine also said the UNM team "may just have glimpsed a way of reconciling the longstanding antagonism" between those who think that intelligence is a matter of straightforward genetics and those who believe intelligence is determined by one's developmental environment. By ANNE BOYLE, The Albuquuerque Tribune <http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/080597/health11_23360.html> --------------------------------------------------------------------- [log in to unmask]