Behavior Genetics最新文献

People evaluate their singing ability to varying degrees of accuracy, but why these individual differences occur is largely unknown. Objectively evaluated, everyday singing ability is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Since singing self-evaluation (SSE) strongly correlates with everyday singing ability, it is possible that the same factors might influence both. Using a classical twin design, we estimated genetic and environmental influences on SSE and its phenotypic relationship with everyday singing ability in Australian twins (N = 996). Two validated measures of SSE were used: a single self-report item assessing overall singing ability (SSE-Single) and a four-item composite measure (SSE-Factor). Both measures showed significant genetic (SSE-Single A = 42%; SSE-Factor A = 53%) and unshared environmental influences (both E = 29%). Phenotypic correlations between the SSE measures and everyday singing ability ranged from r_p = 0.67 - 0.68 and were significantly influenced by genetic, shared and unshared environmental factors (SSE-Single A = 41%, C = 51%, E = 8%; SSE-Factor A = 37%, C = 52%, E = 11%). Strong genetic correlations (r_g = 0.63 - 0.64) were observed between SSE measures and everyday singing ability, as well as between both SSE measures (r_g = 0.82), suggesting shared underlying genes. Taken together, our findings indicate that both genes and environments affect how individuals evaluate their own singing ability and how accurate these evaluations are compared to their actual ability.

The link between age at initiation of gaming (AAIG) and gaming addiction (GA) is well established, but the genetic and environmental etiology of AAIG remains poorly understood due to the scarcity of genetically informative studies. This study investigated genetic and environmental influences on AAIG using data from 1,394 South Korean adult twins (mean age = 23.0 ± 2.6 years; range = 19 to 30 years). Tetrachoric correlations for AAIG were 0.96 (95% CI = 0.92, 0.98) for monozygotic (MZ) male, 0.84 (95% CI = 0.69, 0.92) for dizygotic (DZ) male, 0.80 (95% CI = 0.73, 0.85) for MZ female, 0.56 (95% CI = 0.38, 0.70) for DZ female, and 0.54 (95% CI = 0.36, 0.68) for opposite-sex DZ twins. Model-fitting analysis incorporating sex differences revealed that shared environmental factors dominated (71%; 95% CI = 39%, 89%), with a smaller but significant genetic component (24%; 95% CI = 6%, 57%) in males, whereas genetic factors played a larger role (59%; 95% CI = 37%, 77%), while shared environmental (21%; 95% CI = 5%, 41%) and non-shared environmental influences (20%; 95% CI = 15%, 27%) were also significant in females. Our findings highlight sex differences in genetic and shared environmental influences in the etiology of AAIG. Effective prevention and intervention strategies for GA should consider genetic vulnerability to AAIG and family exposures, incorporating sex-specific approaches.

Outreach in psychiatric genetics bridges the gaps across research advancements, clinical practice, and public understanding. Effective communication with a range of audiences faces multiple challenges, including the complex nature of psychiatric disorders and of genetic findings, the chronicled and ongoing misuse of genetic data, and the rapid growth of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. This is particularly true in the internet and social media era, which has accelerated the spread of inaccurate information with serious consequences, including perpetuating stigma and increasing shame. Yet a significant gap remains in outreach: a recent survey found that only 51% of psychiatric genetics researchers participate in outreach, largely attributed to their perceived lack of skill and support. The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) developed an Outreach Committee to organize and catalyze initiatives including: the Worldwide Lab, an online seminar series covering new and important approaches that is then posted on YouTube; the PGC Video Textbook, which has resources for clinicians, researchers, educators, and the broader public; patient and family engagement programs; and social media campaigns designed to inform both researchers and affected communities about new developments in psychiatric genetics. These initiatives were developed to demystify psychiatric genetics research and empower broad audiences with reliable, actionable information. Along with research and traditional teaching, the psychiatric genomics community should continue to prioritize and recognize engagement as a core component of our academic mission and values.

Mendelian imputation is a promising method for imputing missing parental genotypes and estimating direct and indirect genetic effects. While the method has clear scientific benefits, so far there has been little reflection on its legal and ethical implications. In this perspective, we discuss these considerations and provide recommendations on transparent use of this method. We argue that imputed genotypes should be considered identifiable, personal data, and that using these data requires informed consent. We distinguish different scenarios where consent may be missing, such as an individual previously not having been contacted for consent, or a person who was contacted but did not reply or did not wish to participate. Informed consent is important across all these scenarios as it allows individuals to decide whether they want to participate in a study. In addition, transparent communication on how people's data are used is important for public perception of science, and a failure to communicate this may contribute to mistrust. We discuss potential harmful applications of Mendelian imputation, and how robust regulatory frameworks guiding Institutional Review Boards on novel advanced methods such as Mendelian imputation are currently missing. This complicates decision making, especially when researchers argue for public interest as a lawful basis for foregoing consent. We end with a set of recommendations for (1) future genetic research projects for which Mendelian imputation will be possible; (2) research that has already been conducted using this method; and (3) the inclusion of ethical considerations in the publication of novel techniques/analyses.

This study examined the degree to which genetic and environmental factors contribute to externalizing and internalizing problems in early adolescence, and the role of ethnic discrimination in moderating genetic and environmental influences. The sample included 740 racially/ethnically minoritized adolescent twins (50.3% female, mean age = 11.04 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Adolescents reported on their ethnic discrimination experiences, and parents reported on adolescents' externalizing and internalizing problems. Using univariate biometric twin modeling, we found that both genetic and environmental factors contributed to individual differences in externalizing and internalizing problems. Ethnic discrimination experiences moderated genetic influences on externalizing and internalizing problems, such that genetic influences were higher among youth who experienced higher levels of ethnic discrimination. Ethnic discrimination experiences exacerbate genetic influences on externalizing and internalizing problems among racial/ethnic minoritized adolescents. These findings advance our understanding of the interplay between genetic and cultural factors underlying externalizing and internalizing psychopathology among racially/ethnically minoritized adolescents.

Individuals with high self-esteem experience less social anxiety, fewer depressive symptoms, and exhibit lower neuroticism and higher extraversion. We aimed to explore the genetic and environmental influences behind these associations. Self-esteem, four mental health indicators, and five personality factors were assessed in 1,288 Finnish young adult twins, including 583 complete pairs. The mean age of the participants was 21.9 years (SD = 0.8). Classical twin modelling was used to estimate genetic and environmental correlations. Additionally, regression models were used to examine the association between self-esteem and polygenic scores (PGS) of several mental health traits. Among all participants, self-esteem associated positively with extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness and negatively with depressive symptoms, alexithymia, schizotypal personality, overall mental health problems and neuroticism. These associations were explained by additive genetic factors (19-66% of covariation) and unique environmental factors (36-81% of covariation) when using twin modelling. Self-esteem correlated only with the PGS of subjective well-being in men and women. The proportion of variance of self-esteem explained by the PGSs was minor (1.5% or less). These findings suggest that while self-esteem shares a genetic background with mental health and personality traits, unique environmental factors can also influence these connections. Our findings are consistent with a hypothesis that enhancing self-esteem can have a positive impact on mental health.

In the classical twin design, the assumption that the additive genetic (A) and shared environment (C) variance components are uncorrelated may not hold. If there is positive AC covariance, the C component is overestimated. While many processes can lead to AC covariance, in this study, we focus on two widely-studied mechanisms: Cultural transmission (e.g., genetic nurture), when the parents' genotypes contribute to the effective environment of the child, and sibling interaction, when the genotype of one sibling contributes to the effective environment of another. Several designs use polygenic scores of parents or siblings to detect AC covariance, but these models cannot unambiguously identify the source. A combined model has been proposed, but its power to identify both processes has not been well-studied yet. This study uses exact data simulation to investigate the power to disentangle these processes. Results demonstrated that we can detect AC covariance using either genotyped-sibling or genotyped-parent data, but we cannot resolve its source and thus risk making wrong inferences. These sources of AC covariance can be resolved using genotyped data of both siblings and parents. However, the power analyses show that large samples are required to do so. The sample sizes of published studies may be too small to unambiguously resolve the contributions of the two processes to AC covariance, especially if the effect of one is relatively small compared to the effect of the other. We implement these findings in an R package for genomic simulations, gnomesims, and emphasize the need for whole-family genotyping and modeling.

Gene-environment interaction (G×E) studies analyze how environmental conditions cushion or exacerbate differences in genetic endowments. A gene-environment correlation (rGE) between the polygenic index (PGI) and the environmental condition employed in these G×E studies could bias the estimation of the interaction effect. In this brief report, we discuss the limitations of the commonplace correlation-based test used to verify the orthogonality of the PGI and the environment, and propose to complement it with an additional assessment of the genetic correlation between the phenotype corresponding to the PGI of interest and the environmental condition in the G×E analysis sample using bivariate GREML. Our proposed test is straightforward to perform with the data typically available to G×E researchers, and bypasses that the PGI reflects the environmental conditions of the training sample used to calibrate it. Using UK Biobank data, we provide empirical illustrations covering three environmental conditions relevant for educational attainment. We confirm the orthogonality of the Raising of School Leave Age 1972 educational reform and of gender, although gender did not pass the correlation-based test. However, birth district social class and the genetic propensity for educational attainment appear to be intrinsically intertwined.

The conduct and translation of scientific research is shaped by academic and journalistic publishing. Academic journals issue editorial guidelines and policies that inform how researchers shape and present their studies. Journalists select and report on academic studies for public audiences. Despite the potential importance of journal editors and journalists in the scientific process, little has been done to examine how these groups think about their roles and responsibilities-especially when it comes to ethically sensitive scientific domains like social and behavioral genomics (SBG): the study of whether and how genetic differences between individuals correlate with differences in behaviors such as aggression and outcomes such as educational attainment. To begin filling this gap, we conducted semi-structured interviews with editors working at academic journals that publish SBG research (n = 10) and journalists who have reported on SBG studies (n = 13). Journal editors largely saw themselves as mediators between authors and peer reviewers who help to shepherd along research. Journalists frequently described themselves as translators of science for wide audiences; at times they also saw themselves as interrogators of science. While both groups considered SBG especially ethically sensitive and prone to risks such as misinterpretation, many expressed that systematic ethical review processes and guidelines for SBG are lacking. Further, many deferred the ethical responsibility to minimize risks associated with SBG to others. Our findings highlight the need for more explicit frameworks in academic and journalistic publishing to support the ethically responsible conduct and communication of SBG.

The lack of racial and ethnic diversity in samples used within the field of human genetics research has been well-documented. However, factors driving the under-representation of individuals who are not of European ancestry remains under-explored. The present study aimed to investigate whether willingness to participate in genetic research differed by race and ethnicity, as well as other demographic (e.g., age, gender, religion affiliation, education level) and psychological or individual factors (e.g., trust in research, knowledge of genetics, trait-level worry, health anxiety, altruism, health status) in two ethnically- and racially-diverse samples (N = 2000 via Prolific and N = 264 via an undergraduate psychology research pool). Participants indicated the types of research they would be willing to participate in, including providing saliva or blood samples for genetic research. Approximately, one third of participants endorsed willingness to provide a saliva sample, whereas one quarter endorsed willingness to provide a blood sample. Demographic factors associated with lower willingness included non-white racial/ethnic identities and lower income. Odds did not differ by age or gender identity. Mistrust of research was consistently associated with lower odds of providing a biological sample, whereas higher health anxiety, altruism, and the experience of a health condition was associated with higher odds of participation. Reasons for reluctance were explored, including the influence of compensation, additional information, opportunity for feedback, and study topic. Findings suggest that increasing transparency about how biological samples can be used, involving community leaders, and providing equitable compensation may increase engagement in genetic research, particularly among historically marginalized populations.