Gene-environment interplay in musicality and music acquisition

Miriam Mosing

Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Australia

Head of Behavior Genetics Unit, Department of Cognitive Neuropsychology, Empirical Aesthetics, Max Planck Institute, 

Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Laura Wessedlijk

Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Individual differences in musicality arise from processes involving both genes (G) and the environment (E). To understand the genetic architecture and GE interplay in complex traits and behaviors is one of the major challenges at the research frontier today and essential if we wish to better understand the processes underlying musicality and identify true causal environmental factors on music acquisition. In this talk, we will provide an overview of the state of research on the genetics of musicality and provide examples from our work, highlighting how we can apply well established and novel methods using large scale twin and genetically informative data to enhance our understanding of the etiology of music.

Affiliations: Please find my affiliations below in the signature.