Jitse S. Amelink
@jsamelink.bsky.social
PhD candidate Computational neurogenetics @mpi-nl.bsky.social | EiC MPI TalkLing | #SciComm | #neuroimaging | #genomics | #language | #stats | #ML | #scienceblog | swim-bike-run | dad
Pinned
Imaging genetics of language network functional connectivity reveals links with language-related abilities, dyslexia and handedness - Communications Biology
Common and rare genetic variants, as well as polygenic scores of dyslexia and handedness are associated with the functional brain language network and hemispheric differences within this network, shed...
www.nature.com
Re-introducting my 1st PhD paper😊: we investigated the genetic basis of the functional brain language network: we found 14 common variant loci and 7 rare variant genes associated with it and genetic links with dyslexia, language-related ability and left-handedness 🧠🧬🗣️📖 www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵
The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered
Not with a bang but with a whimper
theinfinitesimal.substack.com
November 21, 2025 at 10:34 PM
I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Super proud of this fabulous team for challenging old comparative frameworks and rethinking what makes language language.
Read more in the thread below 👇 or here 📖😊: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Read more in the thread below 👇 or here 📖😊: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
November 25, 2025 at 11:04 PM
Super proud of this fabulous team for challenging old comparative frameworks and rethinking what makes language language.
Read more in the thread below 👇 or here 📖😊: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Read more in the thread below 👇 or here 📖😊: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Origins of language, one of humanity’s most distinctive traits, may be best explained as a unique convergence of multiple capacities each with its own evolutionary history, involving intertwined roles of biology & culture. This framing can expand research horizons. A 🧵 on our @science.org paper.🧪1/n
What enables human language? A biocultural framework
Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of l...
www.science.org
November 23, 2025 at 11:54 AM
Origins of language, one of humanity’s most distinctive traits, may be best explained as a unique convergence of multiple capacities each with its own evolutionary history, involving intertwined roles of biology & culture. This framing can expand research horizons. A 🧵 on our @science.org paper.🧪1/n
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
If you're interested in how advances in human genomics are transforming our understanding of the biology of spoken & written language abilities, please do check out my new peer-reviewed "tutorial" article, just published.
🗣️🧬🧪
[Will also make a Bsky explainer 🧵 on it next week when I get some time🙂.]
🗣️🧬🧪
[Will also make a Bsky explainer 🧵 on it next week when I get some time🙂.]
Genomic Investigations of Spoken and Written Language Abilities: A Guide to Advances in Approaches, Technologies, and Discovery
Purpose: The aim of this tutorial is to show how the rise of molecular technologies
and analytical methods in human genetics yields exciting new ...
pubs.asha.org
October 30, 2025 at 3:49 PM
If you're interested in how advances in human genomics are transforming our understanding of the biology of spoken & written language abilities, please do check out my new peer-reviewed "tutorial" article, just published.
🗣️🧬🧪
[Will also make a Bsky explainer 🧵 on it next week when I get some time🙂.]
🗣️🧬🧪
[Will also make a Bsky explainer 🧵 on it next week when I get some time🙂.]
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Better schools can compensate for dispositions
Interdisciplinary paper with @paulhufe.net Astrid Sandsør and Nicolai Borgen now out in PNAS!
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
Causal evidence of gene-environment interaction for reading test scores based on:
🧬 Exogenous within-family genetic differences
🏫 Exogenous variation in school value added
www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....
Causal evidence of gene-environment interaction for reading test scores based on:
🧬 Exogenous within-family genetic differences
🏫 Exogenous variation in school value added
The genetic lottery goes to school: Better schools compensate for the effects of students’ genetic differences
www.pnas.org
October 29, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Better schools can compensate for dispositions
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
As the single most important news story this year, I can't wait to see the detailed and central coverage this will get in every media outlet we have
‘Change course now’: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head
Exclusive: ‘Devastating consequences’ now inevitable but emissions cuts still vital, says António Guterres in sole interview before Cop30
www.theguardian.com
October 28, 2025 at 1:00 AM
As the single most important news story this year, I can't wait to see the detailed and central coverage this will get in every media outlet we have
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
OPEN PHD POSITION - Come join our group! The IMPRS at @mpi-nl.bsky.social is offering an PhD position on modelling structured meaning in the brain, supervised by me and Helen De Hoop at the Centre for Language Studies in the @dondersinst.bsky.social -
www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe... #NeuroJobs #cogsci
www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe... #NeuroJobs #cogsci
IMPRS PhD Fellowships 2026 | Max Planck Institute
www.mpi.nl
October 23, 2025 at 9:05 AM
OPEN PHD POSITION - Come join our group! The IMPRS at @mpi-nl.bsky.social is offering an PhD position on modelling structured meaning in the brain, supervised by me and Helen De Hoop at the Centre for Language Studies in the @dondersinst.bsky.social -
www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe... #NeuroJobs #cogsci
www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe... #NeuroJobs #cogsci
Honestly, highly recommended! Very nice and diverse environment, excellent facilities!
Come join us for a 4-year PhD on effects of rare gene disruptions involved in speech disorder, investigated in human neuronal models (via gene-editing, tissue culture, brain organoids, high-res microscopy, transcriptomics, epigenomics).
More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe...
#AcademicJobs #PhDJobs
🧬🧪
More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe...
#AcademicJobs #PhDJobs
🧬🧪
October 22, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Honestly, highly recommended! Very nice and diverse environment, excellent facilities!
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Come join us for a 4-year PhD on effects of rare gene disruptions involved in speech disorder, investigated in human neuronal models (via gene-editing, tissue culture, brain organoids, high-res microscopy, transcriptomics, epigenomics).
More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe...
#AcademicJobs #PhDJobs
🧬🧪
More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe...
#AcademicJobs #PhDJobs
🧬🧪
October 22, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Come join us for a 4-year PhD on effects of rare gene disruptions involved in speech disorder, investigated in human neuronal models (via gene-editing, tissue culture, brain organoids, high-res microscopy, transcriptomics, epigenomics).
More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe...
#AcademicJobs #PhDJobs
🧬🧪
More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe...
#AcademicJobs #PhDJobs
🧬🧪
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Philosopher of mind John Searle has left the building
dailynous.com/2025/09/28/j...
He was best known for his Chinese Room Argument on artificial intelligence and wide-ranging work on the mind and consciousness
dailynous.com/2025/09/28/j...
He was best known for his Chinese Room Argument on artificial intelligence and wide-ranging work on the mind and consciousness
John Searle (1932-2025) - Daily Nous
Philosopher John Searle, well-known for his work on philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, has died. John Searle wrote extensively consciousness and the mind, intentionality, and speech act th...
dailynous.com
September 30, 2025 at 4:31 AM
Philosopher of mind John Searle has left the building
dailynous.com/2025/09/28/j...
He was best known for his Chinese Room Argument on artificial intelligence and wide-ranging work on the mind and consciousness
dailynous.com/2025/09/28/j...
He was best known for his Chinese Room Argument on artificial intelligence and wide-ranging work on the mind and consciousness
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Ode to the original language model, or:
Give me literally Anything* instead of Large Language Models (LLMs)
*(no predictive coding either!)
By Lady Byronadrea LLMartin 1/n
Give me literally Anything* instead of Large Language Models (LLMs)
*(no predictive coding either!)
By Lady Byronadrea LLMartin 1/n
September 29, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Ode to the original language model, or:
Give me literally Anything* instead of Large Language Models (LLMs)
*(no predictive coding either!)
By Lady Byronadrea LLMartin 1/n
Give me literally Anything* instead of Large Language Models (LLMs)
*(no predictive coding either!)
By Lady Byronadrea LLMartin 1/n
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
At points of our evolutionary history multiple Homo lineages coexisted. Insights into these depend mainly on rare fossil crania, damaged & deformed by age. Removing such distortions, new reconstructions of a 1-million-yr-old cranium from China suggest a surprising mix of primitive & derived traits:🧪
The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans
Diverse forms of Homo coexisted during the Middle Pleistocene. Whether these fossil humans represent different species or clades is debated. The ~1-million-year-old Yunxian 2 fossil from China is impo...
www.science.org
September 25, 2025 at 7:07 PM
At points of our evolutionary history multiple Homo lineages coexisted. Insights into these depend mainly on rare fossil crania, damaged & deformed by age. Removing such distortions, new reconstructions of a 1-million-yr-old cranium from China suggest a surprising mix of primitive & derived traits:🧪
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
New paper alert! Systematic epidemiological analyses of up to 39,000 people illuminate biological/clinical links between impaired musical rhythm abilities & disorders affecting speech-language development. International collaboration led by @drsrishtin.bsky.social, out in @natcomms.nature.com. 👇🧪
Musical rhythm abilities and risk for developmental speech-language problems and disorders: epidemiological and polygenic associations - Nature Communications
Impaired musical rhythm abilities and developmental speech-language related disorders are biologically and clinically intertwined. Here, the authors explore the correlation between the two traits, finding evidence of epidemiological associations and genetic overlap.
www.nature.com
September 25, 2025 at 6:18 PM
New paper alert! Systematic epidemiological analyses of up to 39,000 people illuminate biological/clinical links between impaired musical rhythm abilities & disorders affecting speech-language development. International collaboration led by @drsrishtin.bsky.social, out in @natcomms.nature.com. 👇🧪
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Massive sibling regression study finds that human traits are largely environmentally driven (average heritability = 0.3)
Within-family heritability estimates for behavioural and disease phenotypes from 500,000 sibling pairs of diverse ancestries
Quantification of the direct effect of genetic variation on human behavioural traits is important for understanding between-individual variation in socio-economic and health outcomes but estimates of ...
www.medrxiv.org
September 20, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Massive sibling regression study finds that human traits are largely environmentally driven (average heritability = 0.3)
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
“The big perspective change from ancient DNA study is that people living today are almost never the descendants of the people in the same place thousands of years before”
news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
Pure bloodlines? Ancestral homelands? DNA science says no. — Harvard Gazette
Geneticist explains recent analyses made possible by tech advances show human history to be one of mixing, movement, displacement.
news.harvard.edu
September 20, 2025 at 8:05 AM
“The big perspective change from ancient DNA study is that people living today are almost never the descendants of the people in the same place thousands of years before”
news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
A project many years in the process, we’re pleased to present our work on multi-ancestry meta-analysis across a boatload of traits in the UK Biobank: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Pan-UK Biobank genome-wide association analyses enhance discovery and resolution of ancestry-enriched effects - Nature Genetics
Genome-wide analyses for 7,266 traits leveraging data from several genetic ancestry groups in UK Biobank identify new associations and enhance resources for interpreting risk variants across diverse p...
www.nature.com
September 18, 2025 at 5:25 PM
A project many years in the process, we’re pleased to present our work on multi-ancestry meta-analysis across a boatload of traits in the UK Biobank: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Taps side of head… can’t get bored if I never truly specialize!
September 17, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Taps side of head… can’t get bored if I never truly specialize!
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
I've only read the abstract and I already know this paper is so very correct 👀
September 14, 2025 at 3:06 AM
I've only read the abstract and I already know this paper is so very correct 👀
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Another social cerebellar dream team effort: Cerebellar growth is associated with domain-specific cerebral maturation and socio-linguistic behavioural outcomes - thanks Katerina Manoli and co for wonderful work! Thanks also to @imprsconi.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Cerebellar growth is associated with domain-specific cerebral maturation and socio-linguistic behavioral outcomes
The cerebellum's involvement in cognitive functions is increasingly recognized, yet its developmental contribution to cognition remains poorly understood. The cerebellum undergoes rapid development in...
www.biorxiv.org
September 12, 2025 at 11:45 AM
Another social cerebellar dream team effort: Cerebellar growth is associated with domain-specific cerebral maturation and socio-linguistic behavioural outcomes - thanks Katerina Manoli and co for wonderful work! Thanks also to @imprsconi.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
New @maxplanck.de study: We looked for left-right differences of gene expression and cell-type abundances in the brains of MICE 🐭using Xenium @10xgenomics.bsky.social. Possible clues to how functional brain asymmetry is supported !! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Short thread below ⬇️
September 12, 2025 at 7:10 AM
New @maxplanck.de study: We looked for left-right differences of gene expression and cell-type abundances in the brains of MICE 🐭using Xenium @10xgenomics.bsky.social. Possible clues to how functional brain asymmetry is supported !! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Short thread below ⬇️
𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐨 𝐰𝐞 𝐠𝐨 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞?
I loved presenting today results from my #PhD at the #Sociogenomics Seminar at the University of Tartu.
Thanks to @ukuvainik.bsky.social for the invite!
Find me at poster 9 tomorrow at the #GeneForum
#language #neuroscience
Key insights⬇️
I loved presenting today results from my #PhD at the #Sociogenomics Seminar at the University of Tartu.
Thanks to @ukuvainik.bsky.social for the invite!
Find me at poster 9 tomorrow at the #GeneForum
#language #neuroscience
Key insights⬇️
September 8, 2025 at 3:35 PM
𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐨 𝐰𝐞 𝐠𝐨 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞?
I loved presenting today results from my #PhD at the #Sociogenomics Seminar at the University of Tartu.
Thanks to @ukuvainik.bsky.social for the invite!
Find me at poster 9 tomorrow at the #GeneForum
#language #neuroscience
Key insights⬇️
I loved presenting today results from my #PhD at the #Sociogenomics Seminar at the University of Tartu.
Thanks to @ukuvainik.bsky.social for the invite!
Find me at poster 9 tomorrow at the #GeneForum
#language #neuroscience
Key insights⬇️
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Some people call it a minefield. Others call it dangerous, even irresponsible. I call it the most promising field in life sciences.
My love letter to social science genetics: communities.springernature.com/posts/a-love...
My love letter to social science genetics: communities.springernature.com/posts/a-love...
A Love Letter to Social Science Genetics
Some people call social science genetics a minefield. Others call it dangerous, even irresponsible. I call it the most promising field in life sciences.
communities.springernature.com
September 8, 2025 at 5:55 AM
Some people call it a minefield. Others call it dangerous, even irresponsible. I call it the most promising field in life sciences.
My love letter to social science genetics: communities.springernature.com/posts/a-love...
My love letter to social science genetics: communities.springernature.com/posts/a-love...
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Remember this? In the 1990s, a popular view of nanotechnology claimed that molecular gears like this, made of diamondoid carbon, were going to be the components of molecular-scale assemblers and nanobots. But that vision hasn't come to pass. My article in Aeon explores why.
aeon.co/essays/no-su...
aeon.co/essays/no-su...
September 2, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Remember this? In the 1990s, a popular view of nanotechnology claimed that molecular gears like this, made of diamondoid carbon, were going to be the components of molecular-scale assemblers and nanobots. But that vision hasn't come to pass. My article in Aeon explores why.
aeon.co/essays/no-su...
aeon.co/essays/no-su...
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Multivariate genome-wide association analysis of dyslexia and quantitative reading skill improves gene discovery. New paper by Hayley S. Mountford & al. With Else Eising, @profsimonfisher.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s41398-025-03514-0
doi.org/10.1038/s41398-025-03514-0
Multivariate genome-wide association analysis of dyslexia and quantitative reading skill improves gene discovery - Translational Psychiatry
Translational Psychiatry - Multivariate genome-wide association analysis of dyslexia and quantitative reading skill improves gene discovery
doi.org
August 29, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Multivariate genome-wide association analysis of dyslexia and quantitative reading skill improves gene discovery. New paper by Hayley S. Mountford & al. With Else Eising, @profsimonfisher.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s41398-025-03514-0
doi.org/10.1038/s41398-025-03514-0
Reposted by Jitse S. Amelink
Thanks to the presentation by @anthe.sevenants.net at #SLE2025 today I now know of the Zipfian dinosaur 🦕 and shall henceforth use it in all my stats classes 🤩
August 29, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Thanks to the presentation by @anthe.sevenants.net at #SLE2025 today I now know of the Zipfian dinosaur 🦕 and shall henceforth use it in all my stats classes 🤩