Genes have a very strong influence over how certain parts of our brains develop, scientists in the US and Finland have found. And the parts most influenced are those that govern our cognitive ability. In short, you inherit your IQ.

Paul Thompson at the University of California at Los Angeles and his colleagues used MRI to scan the brains of 10 pairs of identical and 10 pairs of fraternal twins. Identical twins have identical genes, whereas fraternal twins sharing on average half their genes. The twins shared environments, means researchers can separate genetic and environmental factors.

The researchers found that certain regions of the brain were highly heritable. These included language areas, known as Broca's and Wernicke's areas, and the frontal region, which, among other things, plays a huge role in cognition.

In identical twins, these areas showed a 95 to 100 per cent correlation between one twin and the other - they were essentially the same. The frontal structure, says Thompson, appears to be as highly influenced by genes as the most highly influenced trait we know of - fingerprints.

"It's extraordinary how similar they are," he says. The finding suggests that environment - their own personal experiences, what they learned in life, who they knew - played a negligible role in shaping it.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1520...-inherited-suggests-twin-study.html

IQ TESTS ARE A JOKE...

Have you ever taken one? (Not an internet IQ test -- those are not actually IQ tests.)

am 8+ year old study. anyhow, part nature, part nurture. Twins have the same IQ cause they are nurtured the same. my IQ on tests was between 115 and 130. My brothers was constantly ~125 and he was put in the gifted programs at school. That class or IQ really hasn't helped him in his life choices. Though he has cleaned himself up in recent years, I became the more educated man.

People have problems; that's not a function of IQ.

Also, not sure "life choices" is that great of a measure considering how much this society fails it, but I think you'll find that most kids in the gifted program turn out OK.

115-130 is a wide spread. Who did your testing? Sounds incompetent to me.

Twins are not nurtured the same; they're in different households, often across the nation. Pinker covers twin studies in a lot more detail, but the first time I heard of this argument was from Schopenhauer.