Do genes regulate social behavior?

The human species is very sociable. The "nature-nurture" issue is still very much in play, and there has long been a stormy link between genes and social behaviour in both science and culture. This debate continues because there are complicated interactions between genes, the brain, and social behaviour that span a wide range of timescales.

Genes do not directly determine behaviour; instead, they encode molecules that help to construct and regulate the functioning of the brain, which is the organ through which behaviour is exhibited. There is a growing understanding that social information can affect brain gene expression and behaviour, as well as how hereditary and environmental factors affect brain development, brain activity, and behaviour. Additionally, through the feedback of natural selection, variation in behaviour impacts the evolution of genetic components that affect social behaviour. Uniquely human traits including empathy, altruism, a sense of equity, love, trust, music, economic behaviour, and even politics may be partially hardwired, according to twin and family studies. In the last ten years, advances in our understanding of social behaviour have made it possible to move beyond twin studies to the identification of individual genes that function in the social brain. Surprisingly, a wide range of organisms, from voles to humans, depend on genes like the oxytocin receptor and the arginine vasopressin receptor for social behaviour.

Is it reasonable to expect that conserved mechanisms and universal principles govern social behaviour at the level of genes and genomes, given the diversity and complexity of social behaviour? The biological demands that underlie these behaviours are profoundly common among species, notwithstanding the significant differences in specific behavioural consequences. Evolving numerous times, social behaviour most likely did so within a framework of neurological systems that have remained constant. The following characteristics are present in all social behaviour systems: They are highly perceptive and responsive to social and environmental information; it is transmitted within individual organisms by one or more primary sensory pathways; the resulting internal state of the animal ultimately regulates behavioural activity.

Even in species without lengthy histories of genetic study, the discovery and analysis of genomic diversity are becoming more and more common due to the growth in genome sequencing. Even though they do not encode social behaviour in any mechanical sense, genes like for and foxp2 may serve as components of a developmental or neurological toolbox for creating the circuits and systems underlying a variety of socially embedded behaviours. The relationship between a gene and behaviour for genes like for and foxp2 may be better understood by taking into account the rate of evolution. Even if genes play minor and indirect mechanical roles in the brain expression of social behaviour, they may evolve through selection by their impact on that behaviour. These genes will offer crucial tools for comprehending the development of genes and other genomic components that affect social behaviour.