ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews recent empirical findings on its genetic basis. It also reviews studies trying to quantify genetic influences on such individual differences in musicality observed in the population. It discusses the genetic variants potentially important for music-related traits. The chapter reviewes the current knowledge of genetic influences on individual differences in musicality. A method to quantify genetic influences underlying individual differences in human traits, which has gained much popularity over the last few decades, is the classical twin design. The classical twin design utilizes the fact that monozygotic (MZ) twins share 100" of their segregating genes, while dizygotic (DZ) twins share only 50" on average. A very early twin study on music-related traits was performed by Coon and Carey on a sample of over 800 same-sex twin pairs. A number of studies have tried to pinpoint the exact genes underlying music-related traits using linkage and association analyses.
