Parenting Influences on Developmental Processes: Insights from Intergenerational Imaging of Human Brain Networks
Parents have large influences on their offspring's development in complex ways that include genetic and pre-, peri- and post-natal environmental influences, as well as interactions across these levels of influence on a variety of developmental processes. My lab is taking an innovative approach to investigating some aspects of these complexities through intergenerational neuroimaging. The intergenerational multiple deficit model affords integration of these influences as well as others, whether parental or non-parental, genetic or environmental, and risk or protective, to explain individual variability in complex traits. Further, it has recently been suggested that most complex traits show intergenerational sex-specific transmission patterns. Because macrocircuits include heterogeneous components with complex interaction among components, they may be ideal targets for investigations, where key factors/causes may converge in ways that lead to complex phenotypes.
My talk will center around these notions, and I will discuss our current research examining how parental cognitive and neuroimaging patterns are associated with offspring's complex traits and related imaging patterns, taking reading (dis)ability as an example. We first establish the feasibility of this novel approach, intergenerational imaging, by confirming maternal transmission patterns in the cortico-limbic system related to emotion regulation, something that is well established in gene expression and behavioral studies of animals and humans. We then interrogate network patterns related to reading, and show strong intergenerational transmission patterns. We discuss these preliminary findings in light of historical etiological theories of reading disability (dyslexia; e.g. testosterone theory). We also introduce our new research program that will allow us to dissociate prenatal influence from genetic and postnatal influence, which has traditionally not been feasible in humans, but is critically important in dissecting the neurobiological mechanisms underlying complex traits.
Parents have large influences on their offspring's development in complex ways that include genetic and pre-, peri- and post-natal environmental influences, as well as interactions across these levels of influence on a variety of developmental processes. My lab is taking an innovative approach to investigating some aspects of these complexities through intergenerational neuroimaging. The intergenerational multiple deficit model affords integration of these influences as well as others, whether parental or non-parental, genetic or environmental, and risk or protective, to explain individual variability in complex traits. Further, it has recently been suggested that most complex traits show intergenerational sex-specific transmission patterns. Because macrocircuits include heterogeneous components with complex interaction among components, they may be ideal targets for investigations, where key factors/causes may converge in ways that lead to complex phenotypes.
My talk will center around these notions, and I will discuss our current research examining how parental cognitive and neuroimaging patterns are associated with offspring's complex traits and related imaging patterns, taking reading (dis)ability as an example. We first establish the feasibility of this novel approach, intergenerational imaging, by confirming maternal transmission patterns in the cortico-limbic system related to emotion regulation, something that is well established in gene expression and behavioral studies of animals and humans. We then interrogate network patterns related to reading, and show strong intergenerational transmission patterns. We discuss these preliminary findings in light of historical etiological theories of reading disability (dyslexia; e.g. testosterone theory). We also introduce our new research program that will allow us to dissociate prenatal influence from genetic and postnatal influence, which has traditionally not been feasible in humans, but is critically important in dissecting the neurobiological mechanisms underlying complex traits.
This talk will be held in 3105 Tolman Hall, 12:00-1:30pm.
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