Review of INNATE
The overlooked contribution of developmental variation
I rarely re-read books, as my to-be-read pile is ever looming over me. But in August as I was preparing my university course on infancy and child development, I was excited to expose my students to one of my favorite books I’ve read in recent years that tells us why we are all so different – and it’s not the typical behavior genetics explanation. If fact, I haven’t read about this argument in earnest anywhere else before or since.
Decades of twin studies and genetic association studies (e.g., GWAS) have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that our DNA – our unique genetic code – is substantially responsible for our individual uniqueness. But nature’s great experiment – identical twins – demands something more. After all, identical twins are as close to human clones as we can get (for now). So, what makes them different?
In Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are, by Kevin Mitchell, he states, “you can’t bake the same cake twice”. You can follow the same recipe to bake a cake — or build a brain — but inherent variation exists in complexity. And building a complex animal such as humans, and in particular our enormously complex brain, is a task that involves inherent random variation that cannot be replicated across individuals – not even individuals with the same exact DNA.
Try to imagine each and every step of building our brain. Or even “just” the task of each of our 86 billion neurons migrating to their place and connecting to their right neural pals. Each movement, a casual bump into another neuron, or a missed connection is developmental variation. Multiply this at the scale of building a human and you have remarkable manifest variation which we psychologists ultimately end up measuring in the form of things like “personality” or “IQ”.
Mitchell’s Innate is a remarkable book delivering a clear presentation of complex genetics concepts and their connection and implications for our understanding of personality, developmental disorders, sex-differences, and intelligence. It’s absolutely packed with interesting turns and phenomenal insights about how our brains develop, and is one of my most recommended books overall.
Mitchell is also in the process of writing a new book, Agents: How Life Evolved the Power to Choose (Princeton University Press), which I hope will be published late 2022 or early 2023 and will immediately be pre-ordered when available.
Published: October 2018
Format: Hardcover
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality by Kathryn Paige Harden (2021)
Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are by Robert Plomin (2018)
Please note: this post contains affiliate links, allowing me to earn a small commission when you purchase books from the link provided. There is no cost to you, and this will allow me to keep this newsletter free and open to all. Happy reading!