How are certain behaviors genetic in nature? my sister’s baby daughter bangs her head back and forth in the exact way my sister did when she was a baby. It can’t be a learned trait, but it’s a running joke in the family that she’s clearly her daughter. Is this genetic?
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Even if the behavior itself is not taught you may be treating the daughter the same way your sister was treated. Mix that in with an already existing genetic predisposition and you have a combo for generational habits.
Also the behavior itself is not necessarily directly genetically linked, it may just feel good with that specific head shape/neck shape to perform that action. Thus you may have a mix of neurological, physical, and environmental factors affecting the genetic expression.
Sharing 50% of her mother’s genetics will share a lot of things. Just how the neuro-network gets built is gonna be similar. When you have kids you’ll notice a bunch of these types of things. They are seriously like little copies of you in a weird way, it’s almost like they share a piece of your soul… because they do!
Hardwired behaviors are very common.
Things like looking towards light, chewing when something is in the mouth, desires to migrate, preferences for nesting materials…
One explanation is that the way various neural structures are formed can trigger a positive response when a stimulus is found. Things like “sugar=good”. So when sugar is found you repeat whatever you attempted.
In this case it might be finding a specific motion pleasurable.
Another possibility is actually a “fault” in the neraul pathway since everyone has variations.
This might be in motor control. The child might be trying to keep the head steady. But either corrects for a tilt to late, v or overcorrects, leading to a head bobbing.
It may not even be neural, and could be a musculature issue where a muscle is understood at this point and can’t properly follow the directions given by the nervous system.
Or a box of all of these.
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