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Report On GenSoc Conference
Report On GenSoc Conference
Report On GenSoc Conference
One of the recurring themes throughout the conference was dopamine, which
was mentioned in a variety of contexts. After learning about how dopamine is
involved in learning, memory and disease, I became curious about whether it was
also involved in the mechanism behind interest. Why do people have different
interests, and how do people develop an interested in something? Intuitively, I feel
that interest is developed through positive feedback from our environment,
contributing to a sense of accomplishment, and also a strong curiosity that can be
triggered by different things depending on the individual. This points to the
involvement of memory and reward signalling, which suggests a role for dopamine.
In thinking more about this, I found myself on tangents about some more
psychological concepts. For example, what are the genetic and neurobiological
differences between human personalities, such as introversion versus extroversion?
Studies have shown that extroverted and introverted people have differences in
dopamine signalling in the brain, and even associated certain alleles with
extroversion. In addition, what about the mechanisms behind intelligence? One
measure of intelligence is the efficiency or rate of learning and memory formation,
but there are also less well-defined aspects of intelligence such as creativity. While
the individual circuitry of the processes of learning and memory have been
discussed in detail and modelled, the overarching mechanism of intelligence is still
vague.
It would be fascinating to better understand the pathways that govern our
behaviour, which are influenced by our interests, our personalities, and our
intelligence. These in turn are influenced by nature and nurture. We have studied
nature in some detail, but nurture and the epigenetic effects on neurobiology and
behaviour are only beginning to be studied. It was unfortunate that Isabelle Mansuy
was unable to give her talk on the epigenetic mechanisms of memory control, which
would have provided a fresh perspective.
Overall, the genetics conference on learning and memory has left me the
following impressions:
1. That the technical barriers in studying neurobiology are being broken
down, with single-cell resolution circuitry even possible for mammals
2. That living organisms are really well-designed machines, and there is a
logic existing behind neurobiology regardless of the complexity of the
organism
3. That there are conserved aspects of neurobiological function and
dysfunction across insects, mammals, and humans, in many more ways
than I expected