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• DECO: a framework for jointly analyzing de novo and rare case/control variants, and biological pathways April 1, 2021
  MOTIVATION: Rare variant-based analyses are beginning to identify risk genes for neuropsychiatric disorders and other diseases. However, the identified genes only account for a fraction of predicted causal genes. Recent studies have shown that rare damaging variants are significantly enriched in specific gene-sets. Methods which are able to jointly model rare variants and gene-sets to […]
  Tan-Hoang Nguyen
• The Association Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Child Telomere Length: Examining Self-Regulation as a Behavioral Mediator March 30, 2021
  Childhood adversity is linked to shortened telomere length (TL), but behavioral indicators of telomere attrition remain unclear. This study examined the association between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and child TL, and if ACEs were indirectly associated with TL through children's self-regulatory abilities (i.e., effortful control and self-control). Hypotheses were tested using national data from teachers, […]
  David W Sosnowski
• Intraindividual association of PTSD symptoms with binge drinking among trauma-exposed students March 25, 2021
  People, particularly undergraduate students, who report elevated symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are at elevated risk of binge drinking. The present study used ecological momentary assessment to (a) evaluate whether PTSD severity, specifically, or psychological distress, generally, are associated with binge drinking and (b) examine the self-medication and susceptibility models of the comorbidity of […]
  Lance M Rappaport
• Rates of Incidental Findings in Brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Children March 22, 2021
  CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Incidental findings in brain MRI and findings with potential clinical significance are both common in the general pediatric population. By assessing IFs and concurrent developmental and health measures and following these findings over the longitudinal study course, the ABCD study has the potential to determine the significance of many common IFs.
  Yi Li
• Three Important Considerations for Studies Examining Pathophysiological Pathways in Psychiatric Illness: In-depth Phenotyping, Biological Assessment, and Causal Inferences March 17, 2021
  No abstract
  Mary L Phillips
• Associations of subjective and objective stress responses with interpersonal trauma, PTSD, stress-induced drinking, and drinking to cope in young adults March 15, 2021
  CONCLUSIONS: The interplay among trauma history, stress, and drinking among young adults is nuanced; additional lab-based studies are needed to further clarify the nuanced connection between trauma history, acute stress reactions, and alcohol use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
  Carla Kmett Danielson
• Genetic and environmental influences on cortisol reactivity to a psychosocial stressor in adolescents and young adults March 14, 2021
  Individuals vary in their response to psychological and physiological stressors, and this reactivity can be captured using measures of cortisol. Previous research suggests cortisol reactivity is under some degree of genetic control; however, the measures used have varied widely. This study (N = 524) examined potential differences in heritability across varying cortisol metrics of stress […]
  Chelsea Sawyers
• Preterm birth, low fetal growth and risk of suicide in adulthood: a national cohort and co-sibling study March 11, 2021
  CONCLUSIONS: In this large national cohort, preterm birth in females and low fetal growth in males and females were associated with increased risks of suicide death in adulthood. However, these associations appeared to be non-causal and related to shared genetic or prenatal environmental factors within families.
  Casey Crump
• Genome-wide analyses of smoking behaviors in schizophrenia: Findings from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium March 10, 2021
  While 17% of US adults use tobacco regularly, smoking rates among persons with schizophrenia are upwards of 60%. Research supports a shared etiological basis for smoking and schizophrenia, including findings from genome-wide association studies (GWAS). However, few studies have directly tested whether the same or distinct genetic variants also influence smoking behavior among schizophrenia cases. […]
  Roseann E Peterson
• Correspondence Between Perceived Pubertal Development and Hormone Levels in 9-10 Year-Olds From the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study March 8, 2021
  CONCLUSIONS: Sociodemographic measures were associated with both objective hormone and self-report physical measures of pubertal maturation in a large, diverse sample of 9-10 year-olds. The latent variables of pubertal maturation described a complex interplay between perceived physical changes and hormone levels that hallmark sexual maturation, which future studies can examine in relation to trajectories of […]
  Megan M Herting
• Examining Sex-Differentiated Genetic Effects Across Neuropsychiatric and Behavioral Traits March 2, 2021
  CONCLUSIONS: Sex differences in the common autosomal genetic architecture of neuropsychiatric and behavioral phenotypes are small and polygenic and unlikely to fully account for observed sex-differentiated attributes. Larger sample sizes are needed to identify sex-differentiated effects for most traits. For well-powered studies, we identified genes with sex-differentiated effects that were enriched for neuron-related and other […]
  Joanna Martin
• Can network analysis of self-reported psychopathology shed light on the core phenomenology of bipolar disorders in adolescents and young adults? February 27, 2021
  CONCLUSIONS: We are encouraged by the overlaps between our findings and those from two recent publications reporting network analyses of BD psychopathology, especially as the studies recruited from different populations and employed different network models. However, the advantages of applying network analysis to youth mental health cohorts (which include many individuals with multimorbidity) must be […]
  Jan Scott
• Multilevel Twin Models: Geographical Region as a Third Level Variable February 27, 2021
  The classical twin model can be reparametrized as an equivalent multilevel model. The multilevel parameterization has underexplored advantages, such as the possibility to include higher-level clustering variables in which lower levels are nested. When this higher-level clustering is not modeled, its variance is captured by the common environmental variance component. In this paper we illustrate […]
  Z Tamimy
• Kraepelin's final views on manic-depressive Illness February 19, 2021
  At the age of 65, 8 years after finishing his last textbook edition, Emil Kraepelin completed the final edition of his "Introduction to Clinical Psychiatry" which included a mini-textbook for students with a 7-page section on manic-depressive insanity (MDI), a disorder he had formally proposed 22 years earlier, and a series of new detailed case […]
  Kenneth S Kendler
• GW-SEM 2.0: Efficient, Flexible, and Accessible Multivariate GWAS February 19, 2021
  Most genome-wide association study (GWAS) analyses test the association between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and a single trait or outcome. While valuable second-step analyses of these associations (e.g., calculating genetic correlations between traits) are common, single-step multivariate analyses of GWAS data are rarely performed. This is unfortunate because multivariate analyses can reveal information which is irrevocably […]
  Joshua N Pritikin
• Associations between the CADM2 gene, substance use, risky sexual behavior, and self-control: A phenome-wide association study February 19, 2021
  Risky behaviors, such as substance use and unprotected sex, are associated with various physical and mental health problems. Recent genome-wide association studies indicated that variation in the cell adhesion molecule 2 (CADM2) gene plays a role in risky behaviors and self-control. In this phenome-wide scan for risky behavior, it was tested if underlying common vulnerability […]
  Rachel M Arends
• Notes on Three Decades of Methodology Workshops February 15, 2021
  Since 1987, a group of behavior geneticists have been teaching an annual methodology workshop on how to use state-of-the-art methods to analyze genetically informative data. In the early years, the focus was on analyzing twin and family data, using information of their known genetic relatedness to infer the role of genetic and environmental factors on […]
  Hermine H Maes
• The Augmented Classical Twin Design: Incorporating Genome-Wide Identity by Descent Sharing Into Twin Studies in Order to Model Violations of the Equal Environments Assumption February 14, 2021
  The Classical Twin Method (CTM) compares the similarity of monozygotic (MZ) twins with that of dizygotic (DZ) twins to make inferences about the relative importance of genes and environment in the etiology of individual differences. The design has been applied to thousands of traits across the biomedical, behavioral and social sciences and is arguably the […]
  Liang-Dar Hwang
• MRI-assessed locus coeruleus integrity is heritable and associated with multiple cognitive domains, mild cognitive impairment, and daytime dysfunction February 13, 2021
  INTRODUCTION: The locus coeruleus (LC) undergoes extensive neurodegeneration in early Alzheimer's disease (AD). The LC is implicated in regulating the sleep-wake cycle, modulating cognitive function, and AD progression.
  Jeremy A Elman
• Increasing the resolution and precision of psychiatric genome-wide association studies by re-imputing summary statistics using a large, diverse reference panel February 12, 2021
  Genotype imputation across populations of mixed ancestry is critical for optimal discovery in large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Methods for direct imputation of GWAS summary-statistics were previously shown to be practically as accurate as summary statistics produced after raw genotype imputation, while incurring orders of magnitude lower computational burden. Given that direct imputation needs a […]
  Chris Chatzinakos