This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives?
This article is part of The Conversationsseries on the science of free will.
Such traits are, to varying degrees, written into our genes sometimes thousands of genes working in concert.
We can nowview a babys brain as it is built, even 20 weeks before birth.
They even predispose forconditionsthat might not emerge for decades: bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia.
40% off TNW Conference!
These includewhich religion we choose, how weform our political ideologies, and even how we create ourfriendship groups.
Epigenetics is a relatively new area of science that can reveal how intertwined nature and nurture can be.
One 2014 studylooked at epigenetic changes in mice.
Read more:Epigenetics: what impact does it have on our psychology?
The study found this new memory was transmitted across the generations.
The mices grandchildren were fearful of cherries, despite not having experienced the electric shocks themselves.
The grandfathers sperm DNA changed its shape, leaving a blueprint of the experience entwined in the genes.
This is ongoing research and novel science, so questions remain about how these mechanisms might apply to humans.
But preliminary results indicate epigenetic changes can influence descendants of extremely traumatic events.
One study showed the sons of US Civil War prisoners had an11% higher death rate by their mid-40s.
There is, thankfully, still scope for change.
As we learn,new connections form between nerve cells.
Take riding a bike, for example.
Read more:What is brain plasticity and why is it so important?
Similar principles create the basis for both perception and navigation.
But theres a catch: sometimes our past learnings blind us to future truths.
Watch the video below were all biased towardsseeing faces in our environment.
This preference causes us to ignore the shadow cues telling us it is the back end of a mask.
Instead, we rely on tried and tested routes within our brains, generating the image of another face.
This illusion illustrates how difficult it can be to change our minds.
Our identity and expectations are based on past experiences.
It can take too much cognitive energy to break down the frameworks in our minds.
For me, theres something beautiful about viewing ourselves as elegant machinery.
Input from the world is processed in our unique brains to produce the output that is our behavior.
However, many of us may not wish to relinquish the idea of being free agents.
Biological determinism, the idea that human behavior is entirely innate, rightly makes people nervous.
Perhaps instead, we could think of ourselves asnot being restrictedby our genes.
