Science Says You Can Thank Your Mom For How Smart You Are (Or Aren't)

If you got into a good college, had an easy time learning and passing tests and generally consider yourself to be intelligent, pick up the phone, call your mom and thank her.

A new study published in Psychology Spot reveals that the intelligence gene is passed through the mother not both the mother and father, as it was previously believed.

Let's get in our time machines and travel back to middle school biology for a second.

You probably recall that women carry two X chromosomes and men carry an X and Y chromosome. The intelligence gene is located on the X chromosome, so you're twice as likely to inherit your brain power from your mom.

The study reports that even if an intelligent gene was inherited through the father, it gets deactivated. Why? Well, according to the report, genes act differently based on where they come from.

But it works both ways. There are other genes that are only activated if they are inherited through the father.

If this sounds bogus to you, there's actually more evidence to back up this conclusion.

Back in 1994, The Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit studied mothers and interviewed 12,686 young adults between age 14 and 22, mainly focusing on education, IQ, race and class.

Interestingly enough, the biggest indicator of intelligence was the IQ of their moms.

Of course, genes are not the only thing that can determine how smart someone is, but we can't exactly ignore this factor, either.

So, what does this mean? Well, if you're a woman and want a smart kid, you don't need to have a baby with a male Harvard graduate to up the odds of intelligence.

It basically all depends on you.

Citations: New Research Confirms That Kids Get Their Intelligence From Mom (Good Housekeeping)