天生胆小：“恐惧基因”在作怪！
Fear in the genesFear is partly down to your genes, but this process changes as you grow older.
“恐惧基因”
恐惧一定程度上是由你的基因决定的，但它会随着你的长大而改变
Susan Brown
If snakes strike terror in your toddler’s heart, he might still grow to be brave. A tendency toward fearfulness does have genetic underpinnings, but those shift several times as children become adults, a study has found.
如果你那蹒跚学步的孩子对蛇感到害怕，别担心，他会变得更勇敢些的。一个研究表明，恐惧确实有遗传学基础，但在孩子长大过程中，恐惧会发生几次变化。
The worries of adolescents differ from those of young children — fear of the dark gives way to squeamishness about blood in a well-documented developmental progression. Now, psychiatrist Kenneth Kendler of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond and his colleagues have found that the genetic factors that leave a person prone to fear also shift during development.
青春期的恐惧与儿童时期会不同——由怕黑转向了对血的过敏，一份得到很好证明的进展这样说。现在，Richmond的弗吉尼亚医学院精神病医师Kenneth Kendler和他的同事发现的使人恐惧的遗传因素也在随着人的长大而发生变化。
To tease apart the effect of genes and upbringing, the researchers tracked 2,490 Swedish twins as they aged from 8 to 20 years old, asking them to answer questions sent by mail. The twins were quizzed on whether they were afraid of 13 potentially terrifying phenomena, including lightning, dentists, spiders and heights.
为了弄清是遗传还是教育的作用，研究者用发邮件提问的方式追踪了2,490对8到20岁的瑞典双胞胎。这些双胞胎被问及是否对13种可能的恐怖现象感到害怕，包括闪电、牙科医生、蜘蛛和从高楼往下看。
At every age a child was more likely to be fearful if their identical twin was too. Fraternal twins also shared a tendency towards fearfulness but the link was less strong, indicating a genetic component to fearfulness.
在任何一个年龄组当同卵双胞胎中有一个对某事感到害怕时，另外一个也往往对同一事物害怕。非同卵双胞胎也有此趋势但要相对弱一些，这说明了产生恐惧的遗传因素。
Fear factors
However, despite this evidence for a genetic effect, children weren’t consistently prone to fear as they grew up. Evidence for multiple fear factors comes from the comparison between ages - some twins were similarly fearful at age 8, but not at older ages.
恐惧因素
然而，即使这是遗传因素的一个证明，儿童在长大过程中，并不一直对某事有恐惧感。恐惧由多因素决定，证据来源于不同年龄的比较——一些双胞胎在8岁时有同相似的恐惧感，但随着年龄增大而消失了。
Similarly, young adult responders who were easily frightened were no more likely to have had a fearful identical twin during early adolescence, the team reports in the Archives of General Psychiatry 1. “You might have fairly substantial changes in levels of fearfulness over time because different genetic effects are coming online at different ages,” Kendler says.
相似的，调查者中那些胆小的年轻成人在他们的青春期不太可能有一个同样胆小的同胞，这个研究小组在普通精神病学档案中称：“随时间变化，你的恐惧可能发生实质性变化，这是由于在不同年龄不同遗传因素相继发生作用的结果。”
The genes that contribute to fearfulness at different ages remain unknown, as evidence for the shift lies entirely in the strength of the links between fear levels in identical twins across time.
在不同时期对恐惧造成影响的不同基因现在还是未知的，这是由于这种恐惧决定基因改变的证据完全依赖于在不同时期同卵双胞胎恐惧联系的强度。
Work to identify specific genes for such complex traits is in its infancy, says psychiatrist Murray Stein, who studies the biological underpinnings of anxiety at the University of California, San Diego. “We are starting to see findings of specific genes being associated with particular kinds of temperaments,” Stein says, but he notes that variation in any of these genes explains only a very small percentage of variability in human behaviour.
确认如此复杂的特定基因的工作应该在婴儿期进行，San Diego加州大学研究焦虑产生的生物基础的精神病医师Murray Stein说，“我们正开始与特定性格相关的基因，”
但他同时表示在其中的任一种基因的差异都只能极为有限的解释人们行为不同。
Stein thinks that the study highlights the importance of recognizing that the factors that lead to excessive fears, or phobias, may change over time. “It could be that we’re going to need very different interventions at different stages of people’s growth and development,” he says.
那些产生恐惧症的因素是可能发生变化的，Stein认为这个研究强调了这一点的重要性：“我们在成长的不同阶段可能需要完全不同的干预措施，”
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