Genes and Behavior

Do Genes Direct Our Behavior? [Video]

Studying the acute sense of smell may provide some answers

• By Mark Fischetti on December 8, 2017

What do we do when we’re hungry? How do we react when people gather around us? Where do we go when we want to be alone? Humans have so many complex behaviors, yet researchers think many of them have developed directly from the ways animals act and react. Whether that is true can be revealed by studying how genes direct biological functions, and how those functions result in action.

Cori Bargmann, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University, is hot on this trail.