«Vanishing heritability» – a new paradox in the context of an old problem

• Main Author: Mariutina T.M.
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Moscow State University of Psychology and Education 2016-12-01
• Series: Современная зарубежная психология
• Subjects: heritability; gene; genome; genetic polymorphism; allele variants; population studies
• Online Access: http://psyjournals.ru/files/84936/jmfp_2016_n_4_Maryutina.pdf

«Vanishing heritability» is a linguistic metaphor, reflecting the phenomenonof noncoincidence between impact assessments for the operation of the genotype of the psyche in norm and pathology, which are fixed in two different methods: population-related and molecular-genetic. On the one hand, population-based studies of kinship (twins, siblings, parents-children), when assessing their cognitive and personality traits, have received high values of the basic statistic index - heritability. On the other hand, the molecular-genetic research has shownthat certain genetic polymorphisms cannot explain a large part ofheritabilityof this kind of psyche both in normal and pathology. The article deals with the background of the problem, examines the possible causes of this phenomenon and the ways out of the situation.