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Genes determining a person's ability to tackle one subject influences their aptitude at the other, accounting for around half of a person's overall ability, a new research has found. 

The study considered around 1,500 pairs of 12-year-old twins. It focused on teasing apart the effects of genetic inheritance and environmental variables on math and reading ability. 

Twin studies provide an efficient way of assessing the balance of nature versus nurture. 

"Twins are like a natural experiment," said Robert Plomin, a psychologist at Kings College London who worked on the study. 

After administering a set of math and verbal tests to the children, researchers found that the twins' scores were twice as similar among pairs of identical twins as among pairs of fraternal twins. Findings further suggested that approximately half the children's math and reading ability stemmed from their genetic markup. 

"If you found genes for reading," Plomin said in the press release, "you have over a 50 percent chance that those same genes would influence math."

"The brilliant mathematician - that's all they do for decades, they just think math and work on math," Plomin added. "It's not like it comes to them with a flash of inspiration. It's really a long, long process of thinking about these things."

The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.