The cultural epigenetics of psychopathology: The missing heritability of complex diseases found?

We extend a cognitive paradigm for gene expression based on the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory to the epigenetic epidemiology of mental disorders. In particular, we recognize the fundamental role culture plays in human biology, another heritage mechanism parallel to, and interacting with, the more familiar genetic and epigenetic systems. We do this via a model through which culture acts as another tunable epigenetic catalyst that both directs developmental trajectories, and becomes convoluted with individual ontology, via a mutually-interacting crosstalk mediated by a social interaction that is itself culturally driven. We call for the incorporation of embedding culture as an essential component of the epigenetic regulation of human mental development and its dysfunctions, bringing what is perhaps the central reality of human biology into the center of biological psychiatry. Current US work on gene-environment interactions in psychiatry must be extended to a model of gene-environment-culture interaction to avoid becoming victim of an extreme American individualism that threatens to create paradigms particular to that culture and that are, indeed, peculiar in the context of the world's cultures. The cultural and epigenetic systems of heritage may well provide the 'missing' heritability of complex diseases now under so much intense discussion

Protein folding disorders: Toward a basic biological paradigm

Mechanistic 'physics' models of protein folding fail to account for the observed spectrum of protein folding and aggregation disorders, suggesting that a more appropriately biological paradigm will be needed for understanding the etiology, prevention, and treatment of these diseases

Psychopathological networks:Theory, methods and practice

In recent years, network approaches to psychopathology have sparked much debate and have had a significant impact on how mental disorders are perceived in the field of clinical psychology. However, there are many important challenges in moving from theory to empirical research and clinical practice and vice versa. Therefore, in this article, we bring together different points of view on psychological networks by methodologists and clinicians to give a critical overview on these challenges, and to present an agenda for addressing these challenges. In contrast to previous reviews, we especially focus on methodological issues related to temporal networks. This includes topics such as selecting and assessing the quality of the nodes in the network, distinguishing between- and within-person effects in networks, relating items that are measured at different time scales, and dealing with changes in network structures. These issues are not only important for researchers using network models on empirical data, but also for clinicians, who are increasingly likely to encounter (person-specific) networks in the consulting room