Genes, Brains, and Being Social

As the article makes clear, Williams Syndrome raises a number of interesting issues about genes, brains, and behavior, particularly in the social realm. But before getting into those, what impressed me particularly is the article itself. Dobbs does an unusually good job of writing about the relation between genes and behavior, displaying a sophistication in this realm that other journalists would do well to take as a model, irrespective of the particular subject they are writing about. As Dobbs makes clear, in this case (and others) genes INFLUENCE behavior; they do not DETERMINE it.

There is still a tendency among journalists, readers, and even many biologists to understand from observations showing similarities in behavior among people with similar genes that genes create behavior, that we are fated by our genes to behave in particular ways. The underlying presumption is that such observations answer the question of whether it is genes or environment that is responsible for behavior: if genes then not environment (and vice versa). As Dobbs makes clear, this is imply not the case, with Williams Syndrome or anything else. If A then not B is not a valid presumption in thinking about the relation between genes and behavior. Showing that genes affect behavior leaves entirely open the question of whether environment (and perhaps other things as well) ALSO affects behavior (and vice versa; showing an effect of environmen does not preclude there also being an effect of genes). In the case of Williams Syndrome, additional observations clearly show this is in fact the case.

The point is not simply that genes and environment (and personal choices) invariably interact to produce behavior but that one cannot, from any given set of observations, say anything even remotely definitive about the relative significance of different contributors. If the amount of environmental variation present in a given population is relatively low, then genes will appear to have a big effect on behavior. If the amount of genetic variation is low, then environmental factors will appear to have a big effect. The only way to find out how much effect environmental variation would have on people with the Williams syndrome genetic variation (or any other) is to explore a variety of environmental variations (cf The Bell Curve: Issues of Individuality and Education). Genes are not "fate"; they are a starting point for an ongoing process of becoming whose possibilities remain to be determined.

Despite knowing with some precision what the variation in genes is in those with Williams Syndrome, we still don't know what those genes are doing and how much what we observe is influenced by experience. Is it an urge to use language that drives hypersociability or the other way around? Is the "gaze" a result of the gene variation or something that develops as a way of dealing with experiences that result from the gene variation? These sorts of questions help to make it clear that genes are not in people with Williams Syndrome what they are but only the starting point from which what they are emerges. And the same complexity holds for all aspects of behavior in all of us.

Dobbs not only makes clear the complexity of gene/environment interactions but also appropriately emphasizes that Williams syndrome is not adequately or appropriately characterized simply as a "deficit"; it "predisposes a person not just to weakness in some functions but also to relative (and possibly absolute) strengths in others." Here too Dobbs would well serve as a model for journalists (and others) thinking about a variety of related situations. We all have a tendency to characterize others (and ourselves) in terms of deficiencies, forgetting that we are all complex and different blends of weaknesses and strengths. And we would probably all do better if we paid at least as much attention to the latter as to the former. It would probably make us feel better about ourselves, as well as more willing/able not only to help others but to learn from their distinctive characteristics (cf. The more I learn, the more I realize more and more that how I think and feel is different and An Unquiet Mind and Culture as Disability).

This is turn brings me to ways that observations on Williams Syndrome can contribute to thinking about the brain and social interactions. Here too I think Dobbs has provided an exemplary piece of journalism, not only effectively describing observations and the interpretations that scientists making the place on them but using both to tell a story that goes beyond the observations and stories of individual scientists and invites a reader to ask new questions and create their own story.

What struck this reader particularly is the way that observations on Williams Syndrome can help in "unpeeling the onion" of "sociability", ie dissecting the several different nested meanings of this term as it is commonly used. That Williams children display a strong motivation to interact with others and yet have trouble forming successful social bonds seems to me both sad and particularly significant, implying clearly that there is more to "sociability" than simply the wish to be social. The suggestion that the barrier to effective social interactions is more about the receiver of social overtures than the sender, and that many receivers evaluate the worth of social interactions in terms of contributions to social status (hence making interactions with Williams children less appealing) is an intriguing one, perhaps related to difficulties that people on the autistic spectrum also have with "neurotypicals". Both suggest that there are two dissociable levels of "sociability", one related perhaps simply to enjoyment of interaction and a second related to the use of interaction to test and revise social status.

Adding in my own informal observations, I'd suggest that there may be at least two other distinguishable aspects of sociability. Many people seem to use social interactions as a way of stabilizing their own sense of personal identity, irrespective of the positioning it gives them in social hierarchies. And some people seem to use social interactions (story sharing) as an essential ingredient of ongoing exploration, a way of discovering new things that one might not have discovered onself.

My guess is that sociability, like all other human characteristics, will prove not only to be a complex blend of different things when looked at from the perspective of the brain but will prove to involve different blends of the different characteristics in different people. The broader challenge, it seems to me, is whether we will all learn to accept this kind of variation as not only the "norm" but as something to be appreciated for the new opportunities it creates. My one concern about Dobb's article is that it ends on a note that threatens to undercut all that has come before. Could there not be in "sociopaths" the same sort of mix of "weakness in some functions but also to relative (and possibly absolute) strengths in others" that there are in Williams people, and in the rest of us?

I remember learning in educational psychology about people who have trouble socially. I don't believe we put a name to it, but if I were to name it, I would say that it's Williams Syndrome. It's interesting to me that some one who actually likes to socialize and be with people could behave in a way that would essentially push the very people they wanted to be with away. It makes you wonder about the idea that:

The bigger the neocortex, the higher the rate of deceptive behavior. Our extra-big brains allow us to balance bonding and maneuvering in more subtle and complicated ways ... People with Williams, however, don't do this so well. One of the most vexing questions raised by both Williams research and the social-brain thesis is whether our social behavior is driven more by the urge to connect or the urge to manipulate the connection ...

What are people's motives to communicate? When and why do we enjoy talking with others? Can this be relating to that person who annoyd you because they just won't be quiet? Or that old person who just keeps on telling their stories over and over again?