Events at and around the CBCD
External Seminar Series
The Research Seminar Series is held at 1.00pm on Tuesdays, Rooms as listed
Tuesday, 19th January, 1-2 p.m. Room to be confirmed
Professor Robert Plomin - Common disorders are quantitative traits
After drifting apart for 100 years, the two worlds of genetics, quantitative genetics and molecular genetics are finally coming together in genome-wide association (GWA) research, which shows that the heritability of complex traits and common disorders is due to multiple genes of small effect size. We highlight a polygenic framework, supported by recent GWA research, in which qualitative disorders can be interpreted simply as being the extremes of quantitative dimensions. Research that focuses on quantitative traits including the low and high ends of normal distributions could have far-reaching implications for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the problematic extremes of these traits.
Tuesday, 2nd February - BBK MAL-509
Dr. Essi Viding (University College London) - Callous-unemotional subtype of antisocial behaviour: Integrating genetic and brain imaging findings
Psychopathy is an adult diagnosis comprised of both callous-unemotional personality traits (lack of empathy and guilt) and overt antisocial behaviour. One can also find children who exhibit callous-unemotional subtype of antisocial behaviour and are at an increased risk for developing psychopathy. Research from our lab and others has documented that psychopathic traits are heritable. More interestingly, when we study subgroups of antisocial children with/without callous-unemotional traits, we find strong genetic influence on antisocial behaviour in the former group, but not in the latter. Our finding supports the view that children at risk for psychopathy form a distinct subgroup with a genetic vulnerability to antisocial behaviour and I will present some preliminary genome-wide association data relating to this group of children. Genetically informative study designs are also ideal for assessing the importance of proposed environmental risk factors and I will present some new data suggesting that negative parental practices are an environmental risk factor for antisocial behaviour, but not callous-unemotional traits. Finally, genetic vulnerability may underlie neurocognitive Œabnormalities¹ associated with psychopathic traits. I will provide a brief overview of data from our and other labs investigating neurocognitive correlates of psychopathy/psychopathic traits. Our ongoing research combines behaviour genetic and brain imaging methodologies and these efforts will be briefly discussed at the end of the talk.
Tuesday 16th February - Room 407, 30 Russell Square
Prof. Marjorie Lorch - "Darwin's Natural Science of Babies and the Founding of Developmental Psychology Research in Britain". (Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck College)
Abstract: Anniversary commemorations have been held over the past year to celebrate the lasting contribution that Charles Darwin made to Natural Science with the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859). Prof. Marjorie Lorch has been exploring the impact of one of Darwin's least well-known works. The "Biographical Sketch of an Infant" was published as a short article in the newly founded journal Mind when Darwin was an old man. The work was based his on a previously unpublished diary he had kept of his own children's early development forty years before. The original diary (1839-1856) and subsequent article (1877) both reflect Darwin's belief that the study of mental development in the child could contribute to questions about the evolution of the human mind. Lorch has uncovered the story of how this article came to be published, to chart its impact on the scholarly community, and to trace the way this minor work of Darwin's was responsible for initiating research into child development and language acquisition in this country.
Tuesday 2nd March - Room 102, 30 Russell Square
Dr. Petrus de Vries - Can we reverse the physical and cognitive deficits in genetic syndromes? The Tuberous Sclerosis Complex story.
Dr Petrus de Vries, Consultant in Developmental Neuropsychiatry, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, UK
Until recently, it was assumed that only Œsymptomatic¹ treatments were available to individuals with genetic syndromes. At a neuroscientific level there was certainly no evidence that the developmental disorders, intellectual disability or specific neuropsychological deficits seen in syndromes could be reversed or even improved. The evidence emerging from a handful of genetic syndromes has, however, begun to challenge this irreversibility assumption, and is showing how an understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying a syndrome can lead to molecularly-targeted treatments. In this talk, we will follow the history of tuberous sclerosis from first description to targeted treatments.
NB UNUSUAL DAY AND TIME!
Thursday, 4th March, 4-5 p.m, Main BBK building MAL B04
Eve V. Clark - Stanford University
Title: Adults use speech and gesture to inform young children about new word meanings
When young children encounter new words in the course of conversation, they rely on several sources of information in assigning initial meanings and in supplementing those meanings over time. They rely on joint attention and physical co-presence to identify the speaker's intended referent (an object, an action, a property, a relation), and on conversational co-presence to supplement their initial mapping of meaning. The latter also offers them a way to link new words to words to ones they already know, and to assign new words to the appropriate semantic domain(s). Adults offer such supplemental information about new referents using both language and gesture. Overall, it is in conversation between adult and child that children learn how to talk about the world around them.