Congratulations are in order for the fantastic staff at the Department who received the Research Excellence Award @marghmalanchini.bsky.social, the Research Initiative Awards (Paraskevi Argyriou), and @nadinelavan.bsky.social & Guifen Chen for their work in the EDI committee 🎉👏@qmulsbbs.bsky.social

How much of the intergenerational transmission of SES is due to social factors?

To answer this, shared 🧬 between parents and children need to be considered. In our new study, we use two designs to account for genetic confounding.

We find that roughly 20 percent is due to social factors!

This work builds on our previous study, currently under review: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

A special thank you to our wonderful co-authors! Engin Keser, @andrealle.bsky.social, @kailirimfeld.bsky.social, Robert Plomin

Research and interventions focused solely on transdiagnostic risk are unlikely to capture the full complexity of these relationships or to enhance our understanding of the distinct cognitive profiles associated with different psychiatric conditions.

Contrary to what has been observed for the development of psychiatric symptoms, which are best predicted by transdiagnostic effects, the association between psychopathology and general cognitive ability is driven by disorder-specific genetic factors rather than transdiagnostic influences.

4️⃣ Within-sibling analyses indicated that genetic associations operated through distinct pathways: for some disorders (e.g., ADHD), effects were largely shared between siblings, while for others (e.g., ASD), they were specific to each individual within a family.

2️⃣ While for some psychiatric disorders (e.g., ADHD, Tourette’s) associations with cognitive skills were negative, for others (e.g., autism spectrum disorder, anorexia nervosa) they were positive.

3️⃣ Associations increased across development and varied for different cognitive skills.

The results showed that:
1️⃣ The relationship between psychopathology and cognitive functioning is primarily driven by disorder-specific genetic effects, rather than by transdiagnostic factors.

4. We used Genomic SEM and calculated polygenic scores to test whether genetic risk for different psychiatric disorders, before and after we removed transdiagnostic effects, was associated with specific cognitive profiles over development, from early childhood to early adulthood.

3. One way of overcoming these challenges is to consider genetic risk. Genetic studies provide a powerful tool for uncovering and isolating shared (transdiagnostic) and unique processes to each disorder.

2. Because cognitive profiles often transcend diagnostic boundaries, it has been challenging to delineate specific relationships between psychiatric disorders and cognitive functioning.

A further challenge is the heterogeneity in the age of onset and diagnosis of different psychiatric conditions.

1. Despite a well-established relationship between cognition and mental health, cognitive functioning remains an under-investigated dimension of psychopathology.

🧠🧬🧑‍🤝‍🧑 New CoDE Lab study: Disorder-specific genetic effects drive the associations between psychopathology and cognitive functioning. Link to preprint: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... Led by the brilliant Wangjingyi Liao 🌟

A short thread summarising the study👇

*New preprint* on ND and co-occurring mental health problems from my lab, led by Chiara Caserini! Using longitudinal data from ABCD we asked: What drives poor mental health outcomes in children with high ND traits? Here's brief summary 🧠🌳🏡 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1.... 1/n

Why do children with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) often have parents with autoimmune diseases?

Our new study shows parental autoimmune conditions affect offspring’s T1D risk through complex genetic factors, including both HLA and non-HLA variants.

🔗 www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

New post by me:

The decline in cancer mortality is about much more than smoking. We shouldn't minimize the very real impact of many contributors — including improvements in diagnosis, medical and surgical innovation, vaccination against cancers, and more — to the reduction in cancer death rates.

I am recruiting a PhD student to join my lab this autumn, to study how vulnerable young people navigate the transition to adulthood: www.sgsss.ac.uk/studentship/... Jointly supervised with Skills Development Scotland, so lots of scope to translate findings into impact and policy!

9/9. In line with transactional models of human development, rooted in evocative/active gene-environment correlation, children seek out environmental experiences that align with their genetic dispositions, partly based on their non-cognitive characteristics, leading to different learning outcomes.🧬🌳

8/9. Children’s unique genetic dispositions were associated with academic achievement partly through their distinct non-cognitive profiles beyond those genetic, environmental and demographic factors that are common to family members.

7/9. Mediation effects could also be observed when examining differences between siblings. Examining differences between siblings we were able to separate the effects of family-wide processes from those unique to each child within a family.

6/9. 🔷 Time-lagged analyses showed that the mediating role of non-cognitive skills persisted across development, underscoring the importance of fostering non-cognitive skills to enhance students’ long-term academic outcomes.

5/9/ 🔷 non-cognitive skills, particularly those characteristics closely linked to learning (e.g., academic interest, curiosity, and academic self-perceived ability), play a critical role in translating education-associated genetic dispositions into observed academic achievement.

4/9. Leveraging longitudinal data from >5,000 twins enrolled in the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) we found that non-cognitive skills play a key role in translating genetic propensity into differences between students in academic achievement. Specifically, we found that:

3/9. This study examines the role of non-cognitive skills—e.g., motivation, attitudes, and self-regulation—in mediating education-associated genetic effects on academic achievement across development.