Image via Wikipedia just a pointer to: Genetic Future’s pointer to the recent article, “Family become first to have DNA sequenced for non-medical reasons“. The father suggests, “it will be ethically improper if you don’t have your children sequenced“. Early days.
Posts Tagged ‘Genetics’
echoblog: Dad, Mom ‘n kids go all-in for full sequence
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged DNA, Genetic testing, Genetics, genome sequencing, Personalized medicine on April 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
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 [...]
Bigger genetic studies, more missing heritability
Posted in Chromosome structural variants, Intronic or repetitive sequences, Uncategorized, tagged Add new tag, Depression, Genetic testing, Mental disorder, Mental health, Twin, Biology, Genetics, DNA, Gene, Single-nucleotide polymorphism, Genome-wide association study, bipolardisorder, Twin study, Copy number variation, Genetic variation on April 5, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Twin studies have long suggested that genetic variation is a part of healthy and disordered mental life. The problem however – some 10 years now since the full genome sequence era began – has been finding the actual genes that account for this heritability. It sounds simple on paper – just collect lots of folks [...]
Sit quietly (with your genome) and discover yourself
Posted in default network, tagged Brain, Emotion, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Mental health, Genetics, Research, Neural network, default network, default mode network, Meditation, Yoga, Heritability on March 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia This past friday, I attended my first meditation session at my new yoga school. I love this school and hope – someday – to make it through the full Ashtanga series and other sequences the instructors do. In the meantime, I found myself sitting on my folded up blanket, letting my mind [...]
Feeling good about feeling bad
Posted in 5HTT, tagged Book Reviews, Depression, Disorders, economics, Emotion, Genetics, Health care, Major depressive disorder, Mental health on March 26, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Just a pointer to a great book – The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder by Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield. Its an in-depth treatment on the many reasons and contexts in which we – quite naturally – feel sad and depressed and the way in which diagnostic [...]
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 [...]
Genetic road signs for super-size coffee SUV drivers
Posted in ADORA2A, DRD2, Uncategorized, tagged 23andMe, Anxiety, Brain, Caffeine, Coffee, Cognition, Disorders, DNA, evolution, Genetic testing, Genetics, Mental disorder, Mental health, panic disorder, Personalized medicine, Psychoactive drug, Starbucks, Stress on March 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
If you’re a coffee drinker, you may have noticed the new super-sized portions available at Starbucks. On this note, it may be worth noting that caffeine is a potent psychoactive substance of which – too much – can turn your buzz into a full-blown panic disorder. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for psychiatry outlines a [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Genes for Down syndrome isolated in mouse model
Posted in DYRK1A, KCNJ6, tagged Chromosome, Development, Down syndrome, Genetics, Hippocampus, Karyotype, Mental disorder, Mental health, mouse-model, Neurological Disorders, Prenatal, synaptogenesis, Trisomy 21 on December 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The human brain is renown for its complexity. Indeed, while we often marvel at the mature brain in its splendid form and capability, its even more staggering to consider how to build such a powerful computing machine. Admittedly, mother nature has been working on this for a long time – perhaps since the first neuronal [...]
Indulging my inner rat over a few drinks
Posted in ADH1C, Amygdala, CDH13, Caudate nucleus, GATA4, Striatum, tagged 23andMe, Addiction, Brain, Gene expression, Genetic testing, Mental disorder, Mental health, Personalized medicine, Biology, Genetics, Genome-wide association study, Alcoholism, Alcohol, GWAS on November 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image by Scrunchleface via Flickr A recent GWAS study identified the 3′ region of the liver- (not brain) expressed PECR gene (rs7590720(G) and rs1344694(T)) on chromosome 2 as a risk factor for alcohol dependency. These results, as reported by Treutlein et al., in “Genome-wide Association Study of Alcohol Dependence” were based on a population of [...]
Genetic causes and non-genetic consequences of schizophrenia play out within 2mm of neocortex
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Archives of General Psychiatry, Brain, cerebral cortex, Development, Frontal lobe, Genetics, Mental disorder, Mental health, neocortex, Neuron, schizophrenia, synapse, synaptogenesis on November 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image by Biking Nikon PDX via Flickr One of the difficult aspects of understanding mental illness, is separating the real causes of the illness from what might be secondary or tertiary consequences of having the illness. If you think about a car whose engine is not running normally, there may be many observable things going [...]
Gabapentin receptor makes nurture stick and your synapses grow
Posted in CACNA2D1, tagged Brain, Development, gabapentin, Genetics, Human genome, neurontin, synaptogenesis, Tempest on November 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image by shehal via Flickr “A devil, a born devil, on whose nature Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains, Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost And as with age his body uglier grows, So his mind cankers.” So says the wizard Prospero about the wretched Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Act IV, [...]
Building and maintaining synapses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brain, Chemical synapse, Development, Genetics, Human behavior, Neuron, Psychology, synapse, synaptic plasticity on October 17, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Phrenological thinking, a popular pseudoscientific practice in the 1800′s suggested that the structure of the head and underlying brain held the clues to understanding human behavior. Today, amidst the ongoing convergence of developmental science, molecular & biochemical science and systems-dynamical science (to name just a few), there is – of course – no single or [...]
3D brain atlas gets comprehensive genetic makeover
Posted in Basal Ganglia, Cingulate cortex, Striatum, Superior temporal cortex, tagged Brain, Twin, Genetics, Magnetic resonance imaging, Biomedical Informatics research Network on October 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The brain is a wonderfully weird and strange organ to behold. Its twists and folds, magnificent, in and of themselves, are even moreso when we contemplate that the very emotional experience of such beauty is carried out within the very folds. Now consider the possibility of integrating these beauteous structure/function relationships with human history – [...]
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