News and Commentary Archive

Explore recent scientific discoveries and news as well as CLBB events, commentary, and press.

Mission

The Center for Law, Brain & Behavior puts the most accurate and actionable neuroscience in the hands of judges, lawyers, policymakers and journalists—people who shape the standards and practices of our legal system and affect its impact on people’s lives. We work to make the legal system more effective and more just for all those affected by the law.

Extending the ‘Cross-Disorder’ Relevance of Executive Functions to Dimensional Neuropsychiatric Traits in Youth

By Lauren M. McGrath, Ellen B. Braaten, Nathan D. Doty, Brian L. Willoughby, H. Kent Wilson, Ellen H. O’Donnell, Mary K. Colvin, Hillary L. Ditmars, Jessica E. Blais, Erin N. Hill, Aaron Metzger, Roy H. Perlis, Erik G. Willcutt, Jordan W. Smoller, Irwin D. Waldman, Stephen V. Faraone, Larry J. Seidman, and Alysa E. Doyle | The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry | September 28, 2015

Abstract:

Background

Evidence that different neuropsychiatric conditions share genetic liability has increased interest in phenotypes with ‘cross-disorder’ relevance, as they may contribute to revised models of psychopathology. Cognition is a promising construct for study; yet, evidence that the same cognitive functions are impaired across different forms of psychopathology comes primarily from separate studies of individual categorical diagnoses versus controls. Given growing support for dimensional models that cut across traditional diagnostic boundaries, we aimed to determine, within a single cohort, whether performance on measures of executive functions (EFs) predicted dimensions of different psychopathological conditions known to share genetic liability.

Methods

Data are from 393 participants, ages 8–17, consecutively enrolled in the Longitudinal Study of Genetic Influences on Cognition (LOGIC). This project is conducting deep phenotyping and genomic analyses in youth referred for neuropsychiatric evaluation. Using structural equation modeling, we examined whether EFs predicted variation in core dimensions of the autism spectrum disorder, bipolar illness, and schizophrenia (including social responsiveness, mania/emotion regulation, and positive symptoms of psychosis, respectively).

Results

We modeled three cognitive factors (working memory, shifting, and executive processing speed) that loaded on a second-order EF factor. The EF factor predicted variation in our three target traits, but not in a negative control (somatization). Moreover, this EF factor was primarily associated with the overlapping (rather than unique) variance across the three outcome measures, suggesting that it related to a general increase in psychopathology symptoms across those dimensions.

Conclusions

Findings extend support for the relevance of cognition to neuropsychiatric conditions that share underlying genetic risk. They suggest that higher-order cognition, including EFs, relates to the dimensional spectrum of each of these disorders and not just the clinical diagnoses. Moreover, results have implications for bottom-up models linking genes, cognition, and a general psychopathology liability.

Read the full article here.

WATCH – “Found in Translation: Why Science Needs Storytelling (and Vice Versa) – an Evening with Malcolm Gladwell”

Click to view event poster.

Click to view event poster.

On Thursday, January 8, 2015 at Peterson Hall in New York City, CLBB presented “Why Science Needs Storytelling (and Vice Versa), – an Evening with Malcolm Gladwell,” a conversation between The New Yorker author and Harvard psychiatric geneticist Jordan Smoller, MD, ScD. The two thinkers discussed the difficulties of translating scientific research for general-audience publications, the gap between scientific consensus and public understanding, how storytelling can help, and why it’s more crucial than ever.

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers — The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. He has been named one of the 100 most influential people by TIME magazine and one of the Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers. Gladwell has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has won a national magazine award and been honored by the American Psychological Society and the American Sociological Society. He was previously a reporter for The Washington Post. Continue reading »

World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics: “Redefining Mental Illness Through Genetics”

Last week, the 21st annual World Congress of Psychiatric Genetics (WCPG) was held in Boston, co-chaired by CLBB faculty member Jordan Smoller, M.D., Sc.D., with Lynn DeLisi, of the Boston VA and Harvard Medical School (HMS). The conference featured leading international scholars in personal genomics, psychiatric genetics, epidemiology, psychiatry, stem cell research, bioethics, and pharmacogenetics.

Continue reading »

The Healthy Debate About Mental Health

By Jordan Smoller | The Huffington Post | May 20, 2013

May 2013 may be remembered as a watershed (or maybe a Waterloo) in the history of psychiatry. Two major events have set the stage for a fundamental debate about how we should think about the nature of mental illness. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is about to publish the fifth edition of its diagnostic system of classification: DSM-5. And, three weeks before the publication, Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), announced that his agency will be moving away from funding studies based on the DSM categories. The goal will be to build a new system of classifying psychiatric disorders based on a basic understanding of how genetics, neurobiology and cognitive functions shape the brain and mind. As Insel put it, “patients with mental disorders deserve better” and “we cannot succeed if we use DSM categories as the ‘gold standard.'” Days later, the chair of the DSM-5 Task Force wrote that a new system based on neuroscience is so far “a promissory note” and that the DSM remains essential for the diagnosis of individuals who are suffering in the here and now. “Our patients deserve no less, ” he concluded. Continue reading »

5 Disorders Share Genetic Risk Factors: Jordan Smoller in the NYT

Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, major depression, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, though seemingly unrelated, share several common genetic glitches, according to a study published by The Lancet this week, with CLBB faculty Jordan Smoller as lead author.

In the largest genetic study yet of psychiatric disorders, Smoller, in collaboration with the Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, analyzed genetic data from more than 60,000 people worldwide. Among their findings were that the five disorders shared abnormalities in two genes used in a major signaling system in the brain. What, if any, disorder those abnormalities might lead to is believed to depend on environmental or contributing genetic factors.

The findings could contribute to a new protocol for treating mental illness that would rely more heavily on genetic information and less on observed and reported symptoms.

The New York Times reported on the study, quoting Dr. Smoller: “What we identified here is probably just the tip of an iceberg,” said Dr. Jordan Smoller, lead author of the paper and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. “As these studies grow we expect to find additional genes that might overlap.”

Read full article in the New York Times.

View interview with Dr. Smoller on CBS This Morning: