Killam Seminar Series: Integrative Phenotyping of the Developing Human Brain

Speaker: Armin Raznahan, MD, PhD

Chief of the Section on Developmental Neurogenomics, Human Genetics Branch, NIH/NIMH

Registration: available now on Eventbrite

Livestreaming via Vimeo: Vimeo

Abstract: The Section on Developmental Neurogenomics (SDN) is dedicated to better understanding the biology of childhood-onset neuropsychiatric disorders in ways that might ultimately help to improve disease prediction, detection and treatment. We approach this overarching goal by using neuroimaging, genomic and bioinformatic techniques to dissect the architecture of human brain development in health, and in neurogenetic disorders that increase risk for psychiatric symptoms. This talk will begin with a brief high-level overview of clinical research within the SDN, before drilling down into two recent lines of work that examine: (i) how an understanding of human brain scaling in health can help detect patterns of brain change in neurogenetic disorders, and (ii) how spatial patterns of brain change in neurogenetic disorders can be “decoded” against reference maps of brain gene expression and histology. Together, these studies seek to repurpose in vivo structural brain MRI scans as tools for nominating potential genomic mechanisms of disease. A key aspect of this work is reliance on integrative research approaches: between basic and clinical science, and between different spatial scales of biological organization. We hope that such integrative approaches will help to overcome some of the distinctive challenges that face psychiatric neuroscience, which is trying to resolve biological underpinnings for poorly-defined clinical entities in an unusually complex organ that we have little direct access to.

The Killam Seminar Series at The Neuro

Supported by the generosity of the Killam Trusts, The Neuro’s Killam Seminar series hosts outstanding guest speakers whose research is of interest to the scientific community at The Neuro and McGill University.

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