Convergent evidence for the molecular basis of musical traits

Abstract

To obtain aggregate evidence for the molecular basis of musical abilities and the effects of music, we integrated gene-level data from 105 published studies across multiple species including humans, songbirds and several other animals and used a convergent evidence method to prioritize the top candidate genes. Several of the identified top candidate genes like EGR1, FOS, ARC, BDNF and DUSP1 are known to be activity-dependent immediate early genes that respond to sensory and motor stimuli in the brain. Several other top candidate genes like MAPK10, SNCA, ARHGAP24, TET2, UBE2D3, FAM13A and NUDT9 are located on chromosome 4q21-q24, on the candidate genomic region for music abilities in humans. Functional annotation analyses showed the enrichment of genes involved in functions like cognition, learning, memory, neuronal excitation and apoptosis, long-term potentiation and CDK5 signaling pathway. Interestingly, all these biological functions are known to be essential processes underlying learning and memory that are also fundamental for musical abilities including recognition and production of sound. In summary, our study prioritized top candidate genes related to musical traits.

Figure 1. Studies included for the CE analysis included a variety of methods and animals.

The figure shows the types of studies included from the different species. The music-related traits in studies using different animals varies as well as the used molecular evidence levels. All molecular evidence from these different types of studies was mapped to human genes and integrated in the CE analysis.

Figure 2. Human gene mapping results of musical abilities and the top 40 genes from the CE analysis.

The top genes (A) are shown on the genomic context (B: coordinates for every chromosome as Mb). Published gene mapping results are shown with heat map bars (linkage) or dots (association): included results by (C) Oikkonen, et al., (D) Park, et al., (E) Theusch, et al. and (F) Gregersen, et al.. The innermost circle shows regions identified by selection signature methods (G) by Liu, et al..