Institute of Cognitive Science

�� Boulder lands funding for advanced study of gene-environment interactions

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 16:52:29 +0000

�� Boulder lands funding for advanced study of gene-environment interactions Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/29/2017 - 10:52

Jeff Thomas

Postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students to increase their knowledge of demography and genetics in one of the first programs of its kind

Jason Boardman has made headlines studying the interactions between people’s genes and their environment, finding, for instance, that social factors trump genetic forces in forging friendships.

Now, the University of Colorado Boulder sociologist is helping to launch an advanced training program, one of the first of its kind in the nation, to train young scholars in this cross-disciplinary field.

The National Institute on Aging has awarded Professor Boardman, from �� Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), and Professor Michael Stallings from �� Boulder’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG), $595,666 over three years, to create a formal training program in the area.

Boardman was a tenure-track assistant professor in sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2005 when he decided to expand his research in social demography, or the statistical study of human populations, to include behavioral and statistical genetics.

Jason Boardman

“Essentially, I had to take graduate level studies in these areas,” Boardman said. “I didn’t have much of a background in many of those fields, so I was raising my hand a lot.”

Boardman decided to look at the intersection and interaction between social factors — such as where one lives or works or whom one socializes with — and genetic factors as both influence complex health behaviors, such as smoking. He has published on this topic extensively, and beginning next year, like-minded post- and pre-doctoral students will be able to as well in the new training program.

Boardman’s genetic research has previously been supported by a five-year award from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the National Institutes of Health. This grant allowed Boardman to maintain his position as a faculty member but spend nearly half of his time studying genetics with researchers at IBG.

Leaders of both IBS and IBG hailed the award:

“This is a tangible vote of support at the national level for the successful collaboration between IBS and IBG,” John K. Hewitt, director of IBG, said. “It reaffirms the value of our efforts to develop innovative interdisciplinary graduate and postdoctoral training programs.”

This training program will enable the next generation of scholars to tackle complex public-health issues such as increasing rates of obesity, individual differences in stress sensitivity, and complex and comorbid substance-use disorders with innovative and cutting-edge approaches.”

"This new grant demonstrates the leadership that Jason has achieved in connecting social and behavioral science with a deep understanding of genetics, something that draws on the outstanding expertise of the two institutes and amplifies our ability to train the next generation of researchers," Myron P. Gutmann, director of IBS, added.

Demography and genetics postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students will be annually funded by the grant over three years to increase their respective knowledge of demography and genetics —demographers will study behavioral genetics, and behavioral geneticists will study demography.

Three postdoctoral researchers, two of whom received support from NIH, have recently taken similar paths at the two research institutes, and have all been involved with innovative research projects, leading to tenure-track positions at leading universities.

Benjamin Domingue is now an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. During his time as a postdoctoral researcher with Boardman, he was supported by several funding mechanisms in an ad-hoc manner. The goal of this new program at �� Boulder is to replicate the training that Domingue received but in a more formal manner.

Brooke Huibregtse, the first postdoctoral researcher appointed to the training program, said she is excited about the opportunity to integrate new approaches with her formal training in psychology.

“Investigating genetic risk factors is only one side of the coin; it is important to also consider the social context in which complex health behaviors develop,” she said.

While there are now numerous research articles expanding on the study of the interaction between genes and environment, there is not a permanent training program today, according to Boardman. Reviewers noted that the strength of research from both the IBS and IBG, as well as researchers from �� Denver, was a significant factor in the decision to locate such a program at ��.

“This is an important indication that reviewers and NIH see this as the place to go to receive this very unique training,” Boardman said. “This training program will enable the next generation of scholars to tackle complex public-health issues such as increasing rates of obesity, individual differences in stress sensitivity, and complex and comorbid substance-use disorders with innovative and cutting-edge approaches.”

According to the proposal, IBS faculty members have expertise in areas that could not easily be duplicated by other research institutes, including the intersection of people’s genetics and their environment and its role in health outcomes, patterns of HIV/AIDS in Africa and healthy adolescent development.

“IBG has an incredibly strong and international reputation in research on genetic factors linked to different behaviors across the life course,” Boardman said. IBG “hosts annual workshops on twin modeling and advanced statistical genetics that are among the most popular courses on this topic in the country. Indeed, following a comprehensive external evaluation of IBG, one reviewer commented that IBG is, ‘a world leader that is unique in its extensive combination of human and animal model research studies of human behavioral variation.’”

Boardman said faculty members are still determining whether to offer an academic certificate for the program. Meanwhile, the interaction between IBS and IBG researchers continues to lead to interesting studies, including “wet lab” scientists such as IBG’s Tom Johnson, who studies molecular behavioral genetics using worms and mice.

“It’s amazing what comes up when we’re all together talking about this,” Boardman said.

Postdoctoral researchers and doctoral students to increase their knowledge of demography and genetics in one of the first programs of its kind.

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Babies with hearing loss need early intervention, but only half get it

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 15:48:16 +0000

Babies with hearing loss need early intervention, but only half get it Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/13/2017 - 09:48

Children with hearing loss who are diagnosed by 3 months of age and receive interventions by 6 months develop a far greater vocabulary than those whose diagnosis and treatment come later, according to a �� Boulder study published this week in the journal Pediatrics.

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Researchers receive state grant to study high-potency marijuana effects

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 18:02:58 +0000

Researchers receive state grant to study high-potency marijuana effects Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/19/2016 - 11:02

Trent Knoss

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science (ICS) have been awarded a $839,500 grant from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to study the effects of using high-potency cannabis, informally known as “dabbing.”

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Federally produced cannabis for research does not reflect potency, diversity of legal markets

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 21:18:35 +0000

Federally produced cannabis for research does not reflect potency, diversity of legal markets Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/14/2016 - 14:18

Strains of cannabis available for federally funded studies lag well behind recreational markets in both potency and diversity, potentially compromising the validity of research into the drug’s effects.

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Empathy for others’ pain rooted in cognition rather than sensation

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 21:10:42 +0000

Empathy for others’ pain rooted in cognition rather than sensation Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/14/2016 - 15:10

Trent Knoss

The ability to understand and empathize with others’ pain is grounded in cognitive neural processes rather than sensory ones, according to the results of a new study led by University of Colorado Boulder researchers.

The findings show that the act of perceiving others’ pain (i.e., empathy for others’ pain) does not appear to involve the same neural circuitry as experiencing pain in one’s own body, suggesting that they are different interactions within the brain.

Tor Wager

“The research suggests that empathy is a deliberative process that requires taking another person’s perspective rather than being an instinctive, automatic process,” said Tor Wager, the senior author of the study, director of the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at ��-Boulder.

A study detailing the results was published online today in the journal eLife.

Empathy is a key cornerstone of human social behavior, but the complex neural interactions underlying this behavior are not yet fully understood. Previous hypotheses have suggested that the same brain regions that allow humans to feel pain in their own bodies might activate when perceiving the pain of others.

To test this idea, the researchers compared patterns of brain activity in human volunteers as they experienced moderate pain directly (via heat, shock, or pressure) in one experimental session, and watched images of others’ hands or feet being injured in another experimental session. When volunteers watched images, they were asked to try to imagine that the injuries were happening to their own bodies.

The researchers found that the brain patterns when the volunteers observed pain did not overlap with the brain patterns when the volunteers experienced pain themselves. Instead, while observing pain, the volunteers showed brain patterns consistent with mentalizing, which involves imagining another person’s thoughts and intentions.

The results suggest that within the brain, the experience of observing someone else in pain is neurologically distinct from that of experiencing physical pain oneself.

The research suggests that empathy is a deliberative process that requires taking another person’s perspective rather than being an instinctive, automatic process."

“Most previous studies focused only on the points of similarity between these two distinct experiences in a few isolated brain regions while ignoring dissimilarities. Our new study used a more granular analysis method,” said Anjali Krishnan, the lead author of the study and a post-doctoral research associate in the Institute of Cognitive Science at ��-Boulder while the research was conducted. She is currently an assistant professor at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

This new analysis method identified an empathy-predictive brain pattern that can be applied to obtain a brain-related ‘vicarious pain score,’ opening new possibilities for measuring the strength of activity in brain systems that contribute to empathy.

The results may open new avenues of inquiry into how the brain regions involved in empathy help humans relate to others when they see others experience different types of pain. Future studies may also explore the factors that influence one’s ability to adopt another’s perspective and whether it might be possible to improve this ability.

Co-authors of the new research include Choong-Wan Woo and Marina López-Solà of ��-Boulder; Luke Chang of Dartmouth College; Luka Ruzic of Duke University; Xiaosi Gu of the University of Texas at Dallas; Philip Jackson of Université Laval (Canada); Jesús Pujol of Hospital del Mar (Spain); and Jin Fan of Queens College of the City University of New York.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided funding for the study.

Trent Knoss is a science editor at the �� Office of News Services.

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Institute of Cognitive Science

�� Boulder lands funding for advanced study of gene-environment interactions

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