Image by Smeerch via Flickr As far as science movies go, the new movie, “To Age or Not To Age” seems like a lot of fun. The interview with Dr. Leonard Guarente suggests that the sirtuin genes play a starring role in the film. Certainly, an NAD+ dependent histone deacetylase – makes for a sexy [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Development’
Movie star SIRT1 makes for a great body but an old brain
Posted in CREB, SIRT1, tagged aging, Aubrey de Grey, Brain, Chromosome, Development, Epigenetics, Gene expression, histone acetylation, synaptic plasticity on July 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Genomic solutions for really big computational problems
Posted in Mindfulness, Visual cortex, tagged Development, Cognition, Neural network, Computation on June 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia Pity the poor brain. What a job it has! Did you know that just to reach into a refrigerator and grab a glass of milk, involves at least 50 or so key muscles in the hand, arm and shoulder which can, in principle, lead to over 1,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations of muscle contractions? [...]
Don’t ask what the genes for Prader-Willi syndrome do, ask where
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brain, Conditions and Diseases, Development, Epigenetics, Frontal lobe, Gene expression, Genomic imprinting, Mutation, Prader-Willi syndrome, visual system, Williams Syndrome on April 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by Si1very via Flickr In an earlier post on Williams Syndrome, we delved into the notion that sometimes a genetic variant can lead to enhanced function – such as certain social behaviors in the case of WS. A mechanism that is thought to underlie this phenomenon has to do with the way in which [...]
First ever replication of a GxE in psychiatric genetics
Posted in CRHR1, Uncategorized, tagged Add new tag, Depression, Development, Emotion, Genetics, Hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, Major depressive disorder, Mental disorder, Mental health, Single-nucleotide polymorphism, Stress on April 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia According to the authors of “Protective effect of CRHR1 gene variants on the development of adult depression following childhood maltreatment: replication and extension“ [PMID: 19736354], theirs is “the first instance of Genes x Environment research that stress has been ascertained by more than 1 study using the same instrument“. The gene they [...]
rs2132683, rs713155 and white matter near the left posterior lateral ventricle emerge from 14 billion statistical tests (vGWAS)
Posted in Frontal cortex, Lateral ventricle, Temporal lobe, White matter, tagged 23andMe, Add new tag, Brain, Development, Frontal lobe, Neuroimaging, Genetics, White matter, Temporal lobe, brain structure, Genome-wide association study, GWAS, Statistical hypothesis testing, Statistics on March 12, 2010 | 1 Comment »
An historic find has occurred in the quest (gold-rush, if you will) to link genome variation with brain structure-function variation. This is the publication of the very first genome-wide (GWAS) analysis of individual voxels (voxels are akin to pixels in a photograph, but are rather 3D cubes of brain-image-space about 1mm on each side) of [...]
Genes in the brain are like genes in muscles
Posted in Basal Ganglia, Caudate nucleus, DAT, Dopamine, Putamen, Substantia nigra, Subthalamic nucleus, tagged ADHD, Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Basal Ganglia, Brain, Cognition, Development, Frontal lobe, Gene expression, Genetic testing, Genetics, Health, inhibition, Mental disorder, Mental health, Neural network, Personalized medicine, Substantia nigra on March 5, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Image by theloushe via Flickr ** PODCAST accompanies this post** I have a little boy who loves to run and jump and scream and shout – a lot. And by this, I mean running – at full speed and smashing his head into my gut, jumping – off the couch onto my head, screaming – [...]
A look inside brains that carry (my) genetic risk for autism
Posted in CNTNAP2, Cerebellum, Frontal cortex, Frontal pole, Fusiform gyrus, Rostral fronto-occipital fasciculus, Thalamus, White matter, tagged 23andMe, Add new tag, autism, Autism spectrum, Brain, Development, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Genetic testing, Genetics, Grey matter, Health, Mental disorder, Mental health, Neural development, Neurodevelopmental, synaptogenesis, White matter on March 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia The A-to-T SNP rs7794745 in the CNTNAP2 gene was found to be associated with increased risk of autism (see Arking et al., 2008). Specifically, the TT genotype, found in about 15% of individuals, increases these folks’ risk by about 1.2-1.7-fold. Sure enough, when I checked my 23andMe profile, I found that I’m [...]
Coping with the shifting sands of development one grain at a time
Posted in SAPAP3, Striatum, tagged Add new tag, Adolescence, Brain, Chemical synapse, Development, Mental disorder, NMDA, NMDA receptor, Obsessive–compulsive disorder, Walter Dean Myers, Young Landlords on February 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by mbrownstone via Flickr Walter Dean Myers, an author of The Young Landlords and many other classic coming of age novels once remarked, “The special place of the young adult novel should be in its ability to address the needs of the reader to understand his or her relationships with the world, with each [...]
FMR1 points to mechanisms of tactile defensiveness in autism spectrum disorders
Posted in FMR1, Somatosensory cortex, Thalamus, tagged autism, Autism spectrum, Brain, Cognition, critical period, Development, Mental disorder, Mutation, pruning, Rett Syndrome, sensory overload, synaptic plasticity, synaptic pruning on February 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by cobalt123 via Flickr If you have a minute, check out this “Autism Sensory Overload Simulation” video to get a feel for the perceptual difficulties experienced by people with autism spectrum disorders. A recent article, “Critical Period Plasticity Is Disrupted in the Barrel Cortex of Fmr1 Knockout Mice” [doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.01.024] provides some clues to [...]
RARB says I was born when my late born striosomal cells were born
Posted in Basal Ganglia, RARB, Striatum, tagged Ann Graybiel, Basal Ganglia, Brain, Cognition, Development, Dopamine, Mental health, Neural network, Psychology, schizophrenia, self, self awareness, Striatum on February 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia Everyone has a birthday right. Its the day you (your infant self) popped into the world and started breathing, right? But what about the day “you” were born – that is – “you” in the more philosophical, Jungian, spiritual, social, etc. kind of a way when you became aware of being in [...]
Semaphorins integrate the sweetness and development of our cortical 6-layer cake
Posted in RLN, SEMA(1-7), tagged Brain, cerebral cortex, Circuitry, Cognition, Development, economics, Frontal lobe, Gene expression, Mental disorder, Mental health, Messenger RNA, neural migration, Neuron, Prefrontal cortex, schizophrenia, Stem cell, University of Pittsburgh on January 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia For a great many reasons, research on mental illness is focused on the frontal cortex. Its just a small part of the brain, and certainly, many things can go wrong in other places during brain/cognitive development, but, it remains a robust finding, that when the frontal cortex is not working well, individuals [...]
C.H. Waddington provides conceptual framework for shifting influences of genes and environment in the development of mind
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Add new tag, Brain, Cognition, cognitive development, Development, evolution, Genetics, Human behavior, Intelligence, Mutation, Population genetics, Psychology, Twin, University of Edinburgh on January 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Just a pointer to onetime University of Edinburgh Professor C.H. Waddington’s 1972 Gifford Lecture on framing the genes vs. environment debate of human behavior. Although Waddington is famous for his work on population genetics and evolutionary change over time, several of his concepts are experiencing some resurgence in the neuroimaging and psychological development literatures these [...]
Suffocation and the developmental continuity between childhood separation and panic disorder
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Biology, Cognition, Development, DSM, Emotion, fear, Genetics, Mental disorder, Mental health, panic disorder, parental loss, separation anxiety disorder, Stress, Twin on January 11, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Image by Corrie… via Flickr Coping with fear and anxiety is difficult. At times when one’s life, livelihood or loved one’s are threatened, we naturally hightenen our senses and allocate our emotional and physical resources for conflict. At times, when all is well, and resources, relationships and relaxation time are plentiful, we should unwind and [...]
Thousands of genes together with thousands of resting-state nodes actually makes the genes-to-cognition problem LESS complex
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Biology, Brain, Cognition, connectome, default network, Development, DNA, Dopamine, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Genetics, Memory, Mental health, Prefrontal cortex, Psychology, resting state network on January 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
DON’T tell the grant funding agencies, but, in at least one way, the effort to relate genetic variation to individual differences in cognitive function is a totally intractable waste of money. Let’s say we ask a population of folks to perform a task – perhaps a word memory task – and then we use neuroimaging [...]
On the genetics of epigenetics (part un)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aging, Development, DNA, DNA methylation, Epigenetics, Gene, Gene expression, Genetic testing, histone, histone acetylation, Transcription factor, Twin on January 5, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Last year I dug a bit into the area of epigenetics (indexed here) and learned that the methylation (CH3) and acetylation (OCCH3) of genomic DNA & histones, respectively, can have dramatic effects on the structure of DNA and its accessibility to transcription factors – and hence – gene expression. Many of the papers I covered [...]
Epigenetics and cognitive development – quick sketch overview
Posted in BDNF, MECP2, tagged Art, autism, Development, Epigenetics, Gene expression, schizophrenia, synaptogenesis, Stress, Anxiety, meme-art, Gene, Cognition, Rett Syndrome, MECP2, Transcription, cognitive development on December 16, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Some quick sketches that might help put the fast-growing epigenetics and cognitive development literature into context. Visit the University of Utah’s Epigenetics training site for more background! The genome is just the A,G,T,C bases that encode proteins and other mRNA molecules. The “epi”genome are various modification to the DNA – such as methylation (at C [...]
Recalling finch beaks using variable decision criteria to learn from whence we came
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Charles Darwin, Development, episodic memory, evolution, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Galápagos Islands, Genetics, individual differences, John Gould, Jonathan Weiner, Memory, Natural selection, Neuroimaging, Psychology on December 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia In his book, The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner describes the great diversity of finches on the Galapagos Islands – so much diversity – that Darwin himself initially thought the finch variants to be completely different birds (wrens, mockingbirds, blackbirds and “gross-bills”). It turns out that one of the pivotal events [...]
Epigenetic loss of an insensitive period of cognitive development
Posted in Hippocampus, Hypothalamus, NRXB1, tagged Brain, Bruce McEwen, Chemical synapse, Development, DNA, DNA methylation, Epigenetics, Gene expression, Health, Neural development, Rett Syndrome, Rockefeller University, Stress, synapse, synaptic plasticity on December 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
We are all familiar with the notion that genes are NOT destiny and that the development of an individual’s mind and body occur in a manner that is sensitive to the environment (e.g. children who eat lots of healthy food grow bigger and stronger than those who have little or no access to food). In [...]
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