Genes as text in different contexts.

NEW PERSPECTIVES

It is the interaction between Psychology and Genes that has changed our way of perceiving genetic inheritance. The last twenty years of research on genes has given us that valuable information.

Here “The Genome Project” has aimed to identify all the genes in our human genetic material, while “Encode” wanted to clarify how this genetic material worked in practice. The main result is in my view strikingly similar to the findings from research on infants. In other words: That there is an ongoing and continuous interaction between internal and external conditions.

This continuous interaction, affects both the internal structures in the DNA and the organization of the surrounding environment

I may illustrate the situation by comparing the child’s original genes as an advanced but unfinished text.

The environment that the child is offered through its family at birth, is like a publishing house. The conditions the publishing editors of the DNA text has to offer, is detrimental of the text’s success as a published manuscript. If the editors initially, reads the “text on the child’s own terms, the relation starts well.

A publishing house (family) that is trying hard to understand what the child’s text(DNA) conveys, based on the child’s behavior, have good editors. If the editors are also allowed to accommodate their way of editing the manuscript, the Publishing House(family) they belong to, is in this context a very good House.

From this perspective of a text/context relation, the newborn in a sense represent the first volume in a relatively unedited, and only barely begun developmental novel.

Encodes’s Approach

Using more than 400 researchers and over 1,600 experiments “Encode” mapped where and how the editing occurred. They mapped when and how, what I call “wiping of the text” occurred, and when and how the “text was highlighted”. According to the researchers’ own terminology, they found out which sites of DNA that act as switches for genes.

Genes are turned on and off

They also found out where and how a gene is turned on and off, and thereby amplifies or dampens the genes impact on the body. It is quite obvious that modern genetics largely revolves around understanding how the translation of genetic message occurs at various levels and through various forms of language. That it is about translating chemical language codes into biological conditions, and that this occurs through the use of chemical messengers that select building materials.

These materials are such as proteins and amino acids, used to form body parts, according to what is written in the DNA text. But it is also clear that modern genetics is about translation and editing in the opposite direction of movement. For the first time in history epigenetic research shows us that there is also a translation, or chemical writing down of the emotional climate surrounding the organism that is formed.

Thus, “linguistically mediated message in the familial context”, could be translated into chemical compounds, and affect how the impaired genetic text is read.    This occurs in a form of reorganization or editing process of the original text, through deletions or highlighting of the message. In a way, both the nonverbal action language and verbal language of symbols in the individual’s relationships, are inscribed as a kind of correction or proofreading of the DNA in the nucleus. Not only physically adverse environmental conditions will create unfortunate translations of genetic text.

Also psychological environmental conditions will greatly affect how the genetic text is perceived. Researchers Jirtle, Skinner and Sweatt, found that the epigenetic processes that control the development of the central nervous system, were particularly heavily influenced by individual psychosocial experiences. This was in special true with the limbic system and hippocampus, which plays a crucial role for the individuals learning ability and memory.

No genes for psychological disorders

Fosse (2009)has summarized the new genetic research as follows: “This means that we now at the cellular level begin to get a picture of how genes and environment interact, and in this picture environment seems to have a far greater impact than previously thought.”

Fosse here refers to the DNA studies of Maher, Sanders and co-workers, Talkowski, Baumne, Mansour and Nimgaonkar. Their research could not provide any support for the existence of genes that predisposed to psychiatric disorders. Instead it proved that the different processes that took place in the genetic material in the cell nucleus, was governed by processes that lay outside the genetic material in DNA. 

A caring environment most important.

These non-genetic processes proved to have the greatest impact on the following four areas:

1. Brain Development, including the individual’s neuropsychological functions.

2. Body metabolism and stress response system.

3. The immune system.

And last but not least:

4. The development of emotional life.

Caring is the most important environmental factor.Top of the list of factors was the quality of maternal care. Maternal care had the most considerable influence on the genetic expression. Absence of early care / maternal care or negative care, led to a steep increase in the activation of the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands. Together forming the HPA system.

This resulted in a kind off massive secretion of stress hormones, including cortisol. Moreover, the brain’s sensitivity to various chemicals decreased or were zeroed out.  In rats, the urge to explore the surroundings was strongly inhibited. The animals were very often frightened and disturbed in what they were doing.

The research showed that the quality of care that the infant receives from the mother, controls the development of the brain and behavior. This happens by altering the epigenetic processes that control the genetic expression of the DNA!   

In people with depression changes in HPA function (see above) is the most well-documented research findings in biological psychiatry. Also when it comes to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia changes in HPA system, i.e. the body’s stress system are considerable. 

Trauma and abuse.

Fosse notes that child abuse seems to follow some families for generations. He refers to studies at Chapman & Scott, and Widom where it was proven that nearly 70% of parents who are perpetrators, have experienced abuse in childhood. Of these, in about 20-30% of the children even expel abuse behavior as parents. This agrees with my own clinical experience.

Mechanisms of “generation transmission” has recently been examined thoroughly in rhesus macaques monkeys. This has been done by taking children from their biological parents at birth, and place them with surrogate mothers.

Studies show that children of abusing mothers, do not become perpetrators towards their own children when they grow up with non-abusing adoptive mothers. But the studies also show the opposite: Children of non-abusing biological mothers, develop abuse behavior towards their own children, when they are brought up by an abusing adoptive mother.

Thus, according to these comprehensive studies, environmental heritage proves to be more important than genetic inheritance. Stress in a relationship with the parents get a decisive influence on the development of both physical and psychological problems and disorders. Moreover, it seems to be a logical connection between the degree of stress and the severity of a subsequent psychological disorder.

Can the child inherit the mother’s or father’s depression or ADHD?

The results of the above research disprove the genetic determinism that everything is primarily derived from genetic text. The results also disprove that it makes sense to talk about a 50/50 ratio between genes and environment. In a broader perspective however, it confirms the basic conception of the world as an unbreakable network of relationships.(see Psych Universe front page)

In this network of relations, the distinctions between internal and external, dependent vs. independent, innate vs. learned, heritage vs. environment are somewhat artificial. They are in some way construed, and primarily created by our desire to comprehend the complexity. It is a human quality related to our possession of language to break up the world in parts in order to identify and understand it.

The consequences of this division can still be that we forget that there is nothing in this world that exists independently of the relationship it has to it’s surroundings. This basic knowledge will apply all the way from the action of a quark and boson, on the nuclear level, up to the relationship between a child’s genetic predisposition and the quality of care from it’s parents, relatives and community.

Our communities main task for children

Based on the knowledge we now have about the function and operation of the genes the community’s main task must be to secure the genetic child a positive basic relationship. From a developmental perspective, this means to secure the child as little relational stress as possible. To achieve this, we need to create a relationship that provide security and predictability, together with ample room for personal expression, and age-appropriate limits set by the environment.

It must, as we have seen from infant research, be developed a “dialogue with the child”, which gets makes the child able to express itself in the best way. In addition the care must enable the child to understand more of itself, and it’s surroundings.  In the author/publisher metaphor, “the child must both be read as correct as possible”, and ” edited ” so respectfully and clearly as possible.

Then the genetic text of the infant will get the best starting point to develop it’s potential as a “supporting text”. This scenario is most likely to happen in an editorial context that is not only able to see the text, but also grabs this potential and laboriously helps it forward to publication as a valuable chapter in an ongoing several-volume novel.

This is the fourth article following Genes and Psychology 1,2 and 3

Se also for the psychological basis of this view in the two articles:

http://www.selvuniverset.com/2016/07/25/how-do-i-become-me/

• http://www.selvuniverset.com/2016/07/26/how-i-was-born-with-you-me-and-the-others/

Literature:

(Reference literature will be available as soon as my website accept the list)