Von der Musik und Kunst zu Schönheitsidealen, die Machtverhältnisse widerspiegeln: Was wir schön finden, ist nicht nur eine Frage des Geschmacks, sondern auch eine Frage der Genetik. In diesem Podcast sprechen Dr. Miriam Mosing und Dr. Hana Maria Gruendler in der Reihe „Was ist schön?“ über die schwierige Frage, was Schönheit eigentlich ausmacht.

Why certain people are more musically gifted than others is not only influenced by environmental conditions, but also partly by our genetics, as shown by both twin studies and molecular DNA research. Overall, it’s both nature and nurture, and they are intertwined. We therefore have to consider genetics to understand how our environment shapes musical abilities and be cautious about making predictions based on our DNA as exemplified by analyzing Beethoven’s DNA. 

Laura Wesseldijk works at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt at the Behavioral Genetics unit in collaboration with the Department of Psychiatry at Amsterdam UMC. We talk about her research on the genetics of music and mental health, methods in behavioural genetics, the role of large samples, the importance of twins for behavioural genetics, and much more. BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. 

Our genes determine many of our characteristics: our build, our height, the colour of our eyes or even our predisposition to music. Could it be possible to control the mechanisms that activate and inhibit our genes, as epigenetics seeks to do? Could this science make us more intelligent, more musically gifted or more athletic?

It’s appealing to think that “all it takes is a lot of practice,” but the factors behind elite performance are more complicated than that.