But few human behavioral traits are directly inherited , in the manner of height, for example, or eye color. The basic idea in twin studies is to show that the more genetically similar two people are, the more likely it is that they will share the trait you are studying. So you identify groups of twins in which at least one is a basketball player. You will probably find that if one identical twin is a basketball player, his twin brother is statistically more likely be one, too. Soon after, the article appears.
New research shows that basketball playing is probably inherited .
Then you move on to conduct some brain research. As in the well-known LeVay brain study which measured parts of the hypothalamus, your colleagues perform a series of autopsies on the brains of some dead people who, they have reason to believe, were basketball players. Next, they do the same with a group of dead nonbasketball players. Not only does basketball playing run in families, but even these people's brains are different. Those parts responsible for an activity get larger over time, and there are specific parts of the brain that are more utilized in basketball playing.