Eli5: What determines if someone is talented at something or terrible at it than it without any prior training?

Question

Eli5: What determines if someone is talented at something or terrible at it than it without any prior training?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Some talents have been studied, most notably athletic talent. With that it’s quite clear that there are genetic determinants (traits related to muscle strength and endurance, cerebellar coordination, body plasticity in terms of adapting to exercise to push limits, etc) and environmental triggers/permissive factors (e.g. Nutrition, starting young when your muscle stem cells are at a maximum and brain plasticity at a maximum, etc).

For other things, it’s probably far more complex. Like being a talented musician, scientist, writer, etc. These are probably also dependent on very complex genetic determinants, environment (like opportunities, encouragement, means, etc) and personality (higher brain organization like mathematical propensity, creativity, many types of intelligence, attitude, bravery to try etc). And the other thing is that talent isn’t 1 or 0, it’s a continuum, meaning you can be not so talented, have average talent, be very talented or even a prodigy. The fact that so many genes and environmental factors are important suggests that their combination decides where you lie on that continuum. So having talented parents is likely to mean you are talented, but not necessarily in the same thing.

Edit: English