Genes and training work in harmony to produce a star

Q: Through the years, I’ve heard people debate whether musical talents are inherited or strictly due to training. Have there been studies?

A: You’ve likely heard the old joke a zillion times.

A tourist in New York asks a passing stranger, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The stranger replies, “Practice, practice, practice.”

Turns out that advice may not be nearly good enough. While people say that practice makes perfect, you apparently need a solid genetic foundation to start with. That’s why numerous studies have shown that genes may go a long way in deciding whether you’ll star at the Met (like Lebanon’s Christine Brewer) or whether you should limit your singing to the shower — when nobody else is home (like me).

Even without any fancy-schmancy research, this conclusion has seemed only logical to most people for ages. For example, classical music giant Johann Sebastian Bach’s father and uncles were accomplished musicians. The father of jazz great Charlie Parker played piano on the vaudeville circuit. Paul McCartney’s old man blew the trumpet in a band. And when John Lewis Nelson had a son, he named him Prince after the Prince Rogers Trio, the stage name Nelson used when he played jazz.

So the anecdotal evidence seems overwhelming. But were they cases of musical talent being inherited — or were those parents simply more likely to push their kids to play because mom and pop loved music? In the last few years, researchers have studied hundreds of subjects and concluded that nature may be as important as nurture in determining whether someone has a real shot at becoming the next American idol.

Even before youngsters can finger a keyboard or tootle a sax, studies have indicated, infants show some degree of musicality fresh out of the womb. In Japan, a 1999 study found even 2-day-old infants showed a preference for some music over others. A 1978 study found that nearly all infants babble with melody and intonation. At 1 year of age, children often can match pitch; six months later, they may break out into spontaneous song.

If that’s the case, you say, why couldn’t almost everyone turn into a Pablo Casals or Tony Bennett with equal training? It turns out that newer studies seem to show that once you get past these primitive beginnings, the amount of musical genetic information you’ve inherited plays a major role in determining your ultimate potential. Sort of like Mother Nature’s “Gong Show,” if you will.

Perhaps the first important study came out of the University of Helsinki, Sweden, in 2008. Medical geneticist Irma Järvelä analyzed 224 family members who were either professional or active amateur musicians — or were related to someone who was. The subjects were given standard musical aptitude tests, including the ability to tell differences in pitch and the duration of two tones. She concluded that genetics accounted for nearly 50 percent of the differences in aptitude. This, she argued, explains why some subjects with even no musical training scored at a professional level.

Moreover, Järvelä found “significance evidence” that tied musical ability to genes on a small region of Chromosome 4. (Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes.) One of those genes helps produce a protein that may be involved in translating the response to noise by hair cells in the ear into neural signals that get carried to the brain, allowing us to hear sound. Another gene had already been linked to dyslexia, suggesting language development and musical ability may have the same origin.

In London, scientists at the National Institute on Deafness studied 136 identical and 148 fraternal twins. When asked to identify “distorted tunes,” the identical twins were far more likely to achieve similar scores than the fraternal twins. Because each set of twins shared the same environment but only the identical twins shared almost all of the exact same genes, researchers said the difference in test scores clearly was a result of genetic influence and not their home life.

Researchers at the University of California School of Medicine found that acquiring so-called “perfect pitch” is strongly linked to genes.

Even stronger evidence came out of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden just last year as reported in the journal Psychological Science. Researchers there studied identical twins and found that no matter how hard one twin had practiced up to a particular point in his or her life, the other twin who had practiced much less still had an equal level of ability in certain musical skills.

Miriam Mosey, a neuroscientist, looked at the DNA of 1,211 pairs of adult identical twins, who share almost 100 percent of their genes, and 1,358 pairs of fraternal twins, who share an average of 50 percent of their genes. Those who played an instrument or sang were asked how many years they practiced and for how many hours a week. Mosey then looked at how much practice improved ability by testing how well each twin could detect differences in pitch, distinguish different melodies and recognize different rhythms.

Much to her own surprise, Mosey found that, in identical twins, there was no difference between the amount of practice time and her measure of musical ability. In one extreme example, one twin who practiced 20,000 hours more than his twin scored no higher on Mosey’s musical ability tests. Mosey concluded that genetics plays an even larger role than practice in certain aspects of musical talent.

Equally eye-opening, Mosey also found that genes even may determine a person’s motivation to practice. Most participants who reported long hours of practice also shared a high percentage of the same genes.

At the same time, however, children who do inherit genes rich in musical aptitude should not even begin to think that they can turn into the next Isaac Stern or Eric Clapton without hours of sweat to develop their innate talent. You may be better at distinguishing pitch and rhythm, but even more studies have shown that you still need to develop the motor skills and other abilities it takes to become a world-class musician.

“The idea that an externally imposed practice regime can and will lead to expertise seems to be wrong,” Mosley told livescience.com last August. “But innate ability should also not be seen in a deterministic way ... Clearly, practice will increase many skills necessary for playing an instrument and is necessary to become a good player.”

Today’s trivia

What popular TV show was originally titled “Alley Cats”?

Answer to Sunday’s trivia: According to some sources, the Greek warrior Achilles died near the end of the Trojan War when Paris shot an arrow into his heel, thus prompting the oft-heard expression of a potentially fatal flaw referred to as an Achilles heel. But it could have been called a Krishna heel, too. According to Indian beliefs, Krishna became a god after a hunter mistook Krishna’s foot for that of a deer and shot an arrow through it, killing him.

This story was originally published December 6, 2015 at 11:16 PM with the headline "Genes and training work in harmony to produce a star."