Study Links Antidepressants and Decreased Coping Behaviors Across Generations
Biologists found that exposure to antidepressants suppresses important survival behaviors in zebrafish, an effect that persisted across three generations and was found to be more severe for males.
Biology and Genetics are Irrelevant Once True Causes are Recognized
The psychiatric genetics literature contains few references to specific environmental factors that cause psychiatric disorders, and while researchers acknowledge a role for these factors, they usually claim that environmental causes are mysterious or unknown. As a leading group of psychiatric genetic researchers recently put it, while claiming that schizophrenia âhas a substantial genetic contribution,â the âunderlying causes and pathogenesis of the disorder remains unknown.â But research suggests otherwise.
From Phrenology to Brain Scans: How Shaky Neuroscience has Influenced Courts
In âWhen Phrenology Was Used in Court,â Geoffrey S. Holtzman writes for Slate about the spurious use of brain science in legal cases. In the 1800âs the âscience of phrenologyâ promised to reveal criminal psychological traits by measuring the skull and today defense teams still employ neurogenetic explanations for their clientâs violent behavior.
Genetics of Bipolar Disorder
Research from the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at USC finds that "The standard concept of genetic testing includes at least three...
“Bewitching Science” Revisited: Tales of Reunited Twins and the Genetics of Behavior
In this article I will attempt to debunk one of the great âscientificâ smoke and mirrors shows of the past half centuryâthe claim that stories of reunited separated MZ (monozygotic, identical) twin pairs indicate that heredity plays a major role in causing human behavioral differences. These stories, which are often used to sell the false ideology of genetic determinism, have entered the public imagination in a way that academic research results never could. Here I will show that these stories provide no evidence whatsoever that (as yet undiscovered) âgenes for behaviorâ influence human behavioral development.
New Study Raises Doubts About fMRI Neuroimaging Research
More than forty thousand papers have been published using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to explore the brain. A new analysis of the common...
Scientists Fight Against the Myth of the Normal or Optimal Brain
A new study out of Yale University uses evolutionary biology to debunk the idea that there is a ânormalâ or âoptimalâ brain.
DSM-5’s âSpeculativeâ 2002 Diagnostic System Based On Expected Gene Findings
According to a leading group of psychiatric genetic researchers, writing in 1999, âFrom the perspective of psychiatric genetics, the Human Genome Project is an immense factory producing and refining the tools we will need to discover the genes that cause mental illness.â A 2002 âspeculative outlineâ by a group helping to revise the DSM envisioned a future DSM-5 practice of classifying disorders on the basis of "the patientâs genotype, identifying symptom- or disease-related genes, resiliency genes, and genes related to therapeutic responses and side effects to specific psychotropic drugs.â A dozen or so years ago, at least some of the DSM-5 architects believed that genes would at long last be identified and would be integrated into the next version of the DSM. As we know, this did not happen.
The Deeper Genome: New Research Findings in Genomics and Epigenomics
In our field, there is a significant âmissing heritabilityâ between rates of âschizophreniaâ in monozygotic twins and the combined reduced influence of genetic variants identified in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The 80% figure often given as a heritability factor is somewhat misleading for students in our field who do not know how the H2 statistic is derived and various ways of deriving it. Through extensive molecular biological research of the most recent studies on monozygotic twins I have derived a theory which will make a much stronger case for socioenvironmental influences on what was previously though of in classically genetic terms.
Effects of Stress Can Cross Generations
Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found, for the first time, that genes affected by stress during life can be passed to the...
The Trouble with Twin Studies
As most readers are aware, it is widely believed that both within and without of psychiatry genetic factors play an important role in causing major psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, ADHD, autism, anxiety, and even post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Twin studies provide the main pillar of support for this belief which is often, though mistakenly, presented as a scientific fact.
âNature and Nurture: Human Brains Evolved to be More Responsive to Environmental Influencesâ
"We found that the anatomy of the chimpanzee brain is more strongly controlled by genes than that of human brains, suggesting that the human brain is extensively shaped by its environment no matter its genetics," said Aida GĂłmez-Robles, postdoctoral scientist at the GW Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology and lead author on the paper. "So while genetics determined human and chimpanzee brain size, it isn't as much of a factor for human cerebral organization as it is for chimpanzees."
Researchers Develop New Model for Understanding Depression
Acknowledging that current depression treatments are failing many people, researchers from Michigan State and MIT have developed a new model for understanding how multiple psychological, biological, social and environmental factors contribute to depression.
Disease Theory of âMental Illnessâ Tied To Pessimism About Recovery
Researchers recently completed a first of its kind, large-scale international survey of attitudes about mental health and they were surprised by the results. According to their analysis published in this monthâs issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders, people in developed countries, like the United States, are more likely to assume that âmental illnessesâ are similar to physical illnesses and biological or genetic in origin, but they are also much less likely to think that individuals can overcome these challenges and recover
Quotations From the Genetics âGraveyardâ: Nearly Half a Century of False Positive Gene Discovery...
In a 1992 essay, British psychiatric genetic researcher Michael Owen wondered whether schizophrenia molecular genetic research would become the âgraveyard of molecular geneticists.â1 Owen predicted that if major schizophrenia genes existed, they would be found within five years of that date. He was optimistic, believing that âtalk of graveyards is premature.â2 Owen now believes that genes for schizophrenia and other disorders have been found, and was subsequently knighted for his work. Despite massively improved technology, however, decades of molecular genetic gene finding attempts have failed to provide consistently replicated evidence of specific genes that play a role in causing the major psychiatric disorders.
Why Precision Psychiatry is Not a Paradigm Shift
A letter just published in JAMA Psychiatry suggests that âprecision psychiatryâ is not the paradigm shift itâs purported to be by the psychiatric establishment.
The Genetics of Schizophrenia: A Left Brain Theory about a Right Brain Deficit in...
In recent months, two teams of researchers in the UK and the US published complementary findings about the epigenetic origins of schizophrenia that have scientific communities who indulge in âgenetic conspiracy theoriesâ abuzz. While these results are intriguing, and no doubt involve pathbreaking research methodologies, this line of thought represents a decontextualized understanding both of the symptoms that are typically associated with schizophrenia, and their causes.
Large German Anti-Stigma Campaign Shows Little Effect on Attitudes
âOverall, this study showed that the information and awareness campaign had almost no significant effects on the general public's attitudes toward people affected by either schizophrenia or depression,â the researchers, led by German medical sociologist Anna Makowski, wrote. âOne could assume that deeply rooted convictions cannot be modified by rather time-limited and general activities targeted at the public.â
Mental Health Professionals Critique the Biomedical Model of Psychological Problems
While a great deal of the excitement about advances in psychological treatments comes from the potential for research in neuroscience to unlock the secrets of the brain, many mental health experts would like to temper this enthusiasm. A special issue of the Behavior Therapist released this month calls into question the predominant conception of mental illnesses as brain disorders.
NIMH Funding Changes Threaten Psychotherapy Research
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is increasingly shifting its research emphasis toward attempting to uncover biomarkers for âmental diseases,â which may have dramatic consequences for research and training in clinical psychology. In an article to be published in next monthâs Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Marvin Goldfried outlines how the shift in funding priorities for psychological research is tied to the needs of pharmaceutical companies and the biological model in psychiatry.
Twin Studies and the “Nonreplication Curse” in Psychiatric Molecular Genetic Research
Psychiatric molecular genetic research has failed to discover genes that underlie the major psychiatric disorders, the existence of which twin and adoption studies are assumed to have established. "Genome-wide complex trait analysis" (GCTA) was developed a few years ago as a means of solving what researchers call the "missing heritability" problem. One researcher believed that the new GCTA method would âdrive a stake through the heart ofâ criticism of behavioral genetic theories and methods, and would finally put criticism of twin studies âto rest.â The opposite scenario appears to be playing out, however, as leading behavioral genetic and psychiatric genetic researchers struggle to prevent some recent negative GCTA findings and the obvious false assumptions underlying twin research from driving a stake through the heart of twin studies themselves.
Researchers Question Link Between Genetics and Depression
A new study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, found no link between genetics and the occurrence of depressive symptoms.
Brain Imaging Reveals Psychiatric Disorders are Not Neurological Disorders
Some researchers have been arguing to reclassify all psychiatric disorders as diseases of the brain and nervous system, similar to epilepsy or Parkinson's disease. Neuroimaging research, however, reveals that psychiatric disorders appear to be distinct from neurological disorders, according to a new study published in this monthâs issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry.
The Genetics of Depression: “Look to the Environment”
A comprehensive review of research on the genetics of depression up to 2012, published online today by Psychological Bulletin, finds "a continued lack of...
Twin Studies are Still in Trouble: A Response to Turkheimer
Human behavioral genetics and its allied field of psychiatric genetics are in trouble, as unfulfilled gene discovery expectations during the âeuphoria of the 1980sâ have continued to the present day, leading to researchersâ ânonreplication curseâ dysphoria of the 2010s. In my recent book The Trouble with Twin Studies: A Reassessment of Twin Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, I presented a detailed argument that genetic interpretations of the common âclassical twin methodâ finding that reared-together MZ twin pairs resemble each other more (correlate higher) for behavioral characteristics than do reared-together same-sex DZ twin pairs are invalid because, among other reasons, the twin methodâs crucial MZ-DZ âequal environment assumptionâ (EEA) is false.