Music genetics research: Association with musicality of a polymorphism in the AVPR1A gene

Abstract

Musicality is defined as a natural tendency, sensibility, knowledge, or talent to create, perceive, and play music. Musical abilities involve a great range of social and cognitive behaviors, which are influenced by both environmental and genetic factors. Although a number of studies have yielded insights into music genetics research, genes and biological pathways related to these traits are not fully understood. Our hypothesis in the current study is that genes associated with different behaviors could also influence the musical phenotype. Our aim was to investigate whether polymorphisms in six genes (AVPR1A, SLC6A4, ITGB3, COMT, DRD2 and DRD4) related to social and cognitive traits are associated with musicality in a sample of children. Musicality was assessed through an individualized music therapy assessment profile (IMTAP) which has been validated in Brazil to measure musical ability. We show here that the RS1 microsatellite of the AVPR1A gene is nominally associated with musicality, corroborating previous results linking AVPR1A with musical activity. This study is one of the first to investigate musicality in a comprehensive way, and it contributes to better understand the genetic basis underlying musical ability.

How far musicality and perfect pitch are derived from genetic factors?

“…Genotyping of AVPR1 was studied together with other genes related to social and cognitive traits, namely SLC6A4, ITGB3, COMT, DRD2, and DRD4. Again AVPR1 was the only gene found linked to musical ability (Mariath et al 2017) that is in a close agreement with the findings described by Finnish investigators (Ukkola et al 2009).…”

Human Genomics and the Biocultural Origin of Music

“…In this context, genomic approaches allow to identify the genes associated with a specific trait (music, in this case) in an impartial way and without a priori hypothesis [92]. In the last decades, genome-wide studies have been carried out to find the genetic basis of musicality and the genetic variants associated with it, even if the bulk of these studies has been performed on Finnish individuals [93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101]. The results show that musical apti-tude and creativity display a percentage of heritability [93,94], and that there are several genetic loci linked to musical aptitude, mainly including genes involved in neurocognitive functions, auditory pathways and the development of the inner ear.…”

“…In candidate gene studies, the first genes to have been related to musical aptitude are AVPR1A and SLC6A4, encoding, respectively, the arginine vasopressin receptor 1A and the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) [101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110]. Haplotypes of microsatellites (RS1, RS3) in the promotor region of AVPR1A were associated with dance performance [101], active listening to music [95], musical aptitude and creativity in music [94,103]. AVPR1A is involved in the control of higher cognitive functions such as memory and learning [103] and seems to play a role in several social behaviors, such as altruism [104] and autism [105].…”

Links Between the Neurobiology of Oxytocin and Human Musicality

“…Polymorphisms in the AVPR1a receptor have been linked to variability in aggression, response to stress, trust, and altruistic behaviors (Israel et al, 2008 ; Moons et al, 2014 ; Aspé-Sánchez et al, 2016 ; Nishina et al, 2019 ). Whilst there is as yet no evidence that endogenous levels of circulating AVP are altered by musical activity, AVPR1a receptor polymorphisms have been linked to musical aptitude (Pulli et al, 2008 ; Ukkola et al, 2009 ; Liu et al, 2016 ; Mariath et al, 2017 ), memory (Granot et al, 2007 , 2013 ) and appreciation (Ukkola-Vuoti et al, 2011 ), as well as music and dance creativity (Bachner-Melman et al, 2005 ; Israel et al, 2008 ; Oikkonen et al, 2016 ). On the other hand, receptor polymorphisms were not more common in choral singers compared with people designated as non-musicians (Morley et al, 2012 ).…”