Brain meeting: Kevin J. Mitchell

Brain meeting 

Decades of research has consistently shown that many of our psychological traits are substantially heritable. That is, a considerable fraction of the variation we see in such traits is attributable to genetic differences between individuals. What has been less clear is how genetic variation ultimately affects high-level cognitive functions or sometimes leads to dysfunction. Understanding this relationship requires a developmental perspective. Genetic variants associated with psychological traits and psychiatric disorders, or with heritable parameters of brain structure and function, are strongly enriched for genes with roles in neural development. These are not “genes for intelligence” or “genes for neuroticism” or “genes for schizophrenia” – they are genes for building a brain, or, more accurately, they are genetic variants that affect the complex processes by which the brain self-assembles. The relationship to cognitive functions and psychological traits is thus highly indirect and emergent. Moreover, genetic differences are not the only sources of variation in brain development. The processes of neural development themselves are inherently stochastic, leading to both quantitative and qualitative variation in outcomes, even from the identical genome. Genetic and developmental variation thus combine to cause variation in the way our brains are wired, manifesting as differences in our innate psychological predispositions. In turn, these predispositions influence our experiences and our subjective responses to those experiences in a way that continues to shape the emergence of our individual character and habits over our lifetimes. 

There will be coffee, tea and cake in the conservatory directly after the talk.