Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain

ience, this issue p. eaap8757 Structured Abstract INTRODUCTION Brain disorders may exhibit shared symptoms and substantial epidemiological comorbidity, inciting debate about their etiologic overlap. However, detailed study of phenotypes with different ages of onset, severity, and presentation poses a considerable challenge. Recently developed heritability methods allow us to accurately measure correlation of genome-wide common variant risk between two phenotypes from pools of different individuals and assess how connected they, or at least their genetic risks, are on the genomic level. We used genome-wide association data for 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants, as well as 17 phenotypes from a total of 1,191,588 individuals, to quantify the degree of overlap for genetic risk factors of 25 common brain disorders. RATIONALE Over the past century, the classification of brain disorders has evolved to reflect the medical and scientific communities' assessments of the presumed root causes of clinical phenomena such as behavioral change, loss of motor function, or alterations of consciousness. Directly observable phenomena (such as the presence of emboli, protein tangles, or unusual electrical activity patterns) generally define and separate neurological disorders from psychiatric disorders. Understanding the genetic underpinnings and categorical distinctions for brain disorders and related phenotypes may inform the search for their biological mechanisms. RESULTS Common variant risk for psychiatric disorders was shown to correlate significantly, especially among attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder (MDD), and schizophrenia. By contrast, neurological disorders appear more distinct from one another and from the psychiatric disorders, except for migraine, which was significantly correlated to ADHD, MDD, and Tourette syndrome. We demonstrate that, in the general population, the personality trait neuroticism is significantly correlated with almost every psychiatric disorder and migraine. We also identify significant genetic sharing between disorders and early life cognitive measures (e.g., years of education and college attainment) in the general population, demonstrating positive correlation with several psychiatric disorders (e.g., anorexia nervosa and bipolar disorder) and negative correlation with several neurological phenotypes (e.g., Alzheimer's disease and ischemic stroke), even though the latter are considered to result from specific processes that occur later in life. Extensive simulations were also performed to inform how statistical power, diagnostic misclassification, and phenotypic heterogeneity influence genetic correlations. CONCLUSION The high degree of genetic correlation among many of the psychiatric disorders adds further evidence that their current clinical boundaries do not reflect distinct underlying pathogenic processes, at least on the genetic level. This suggests a deeply interconnected nature for psychiatric disorders, in contrast to neurological disorders, and underscores the need to refine psychiatric diagnostics. Genetically informed analyses may provide important "scaffolding" to support such restructuring of psychiatric nosology, which likely requires incorporating many levels of information. By contrast, we find limited evidence for widespread common genetic risk sharing among neurological disorders or across neurological and psychiatric disorders. We show that both psychiatric and neurological disorders have robust correlations with cognitive and personality measures. Further study is needed to evaluate whether overlapping genetic contributions to psychiatric pathology may influence treatment choices. Ultimately, such developments may pave the way toward reduced heterogeneity and improved diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders

Contribution

Bobby Benedicto, Contribution to the panel ‘On Reproduction’, part of the symposium The Ontology of the Couple, ICI Berlin, 9–10 June 2016, video recording, mp4, 28:07 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e160609_06

The Third World Queer

As queerness becomes a mechanism for exclusions, queerness becomes the site of an ethical struggle over who will reap the rights and benefits of normativity. who will incur the costs of non-normativity, a struggle that ties economic and institutional enfranchisement. With the admission of women and people of color into predominantly white academic settings, the economic character of the American academy did not simply vanish. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside. For Stuart Hall liberatory movements were both political and epistemological formations that attempted to simultaneously disinter and reconstruct subjugated histories around race, gender, and nation. The disinternment and reconstruction of those histories put certain social pressures on canonical forms of history. In his classic essay The Local and the Global , Stuart Hall locates the social movements within the emergence of a new trajectory for global capitalism

Introduction

Bobby Benedicto, Introduction to the workshop Forms of Attachment: Affect at the Limits of the Political, ICI Berlin, 9 July 2012, video recording, mp4, 03:03 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e120709_1

Contribution

Panel IX: The Question of UniversalityBobby Benedicto, Contribution to the panel ‘The Question of Universality’, part of the conference Reconfiguring Cultural Inquiry, ICI Berlin, 29–1 July 2017, video recording, mp4, 15:04 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e170729_18

Discussion

Discussion of the screening Still Not Over It, ICI Berlin, 28 June 2018, video recording, mp4, 21:27 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e180628_2

Still Not Over It

Still Not Over It is an extensive programme of 12 queer Canadian documentary, experimental, performance, and fiction short films spanning 55 years of moving image art. Variously addressing memory, social history, and future potentialities, these shorts employ strategies of anachronism, queered retellings, hope, reminiscence, and ressentiment to elicit questions on queer temporality: what is our past with/out our overcomings? Who were we and how have our desires changed, and not changed, over time? Culled from the online catalogue MEDIAQUEER.CA – a research tool for LGBT moving image art in Canada and Québec – this selection shows us bygone eras and timeless aspirations from rural midcentury desire to 70s experimentalism, 80s essays, 90s elegies, and millennial flux. The screening will be followed by a Q&amp;A moderated by Bobby Benedicto (McGill University) with artist Wayne Yung and co-curator Jordan Arseneault.Screening schedule: Wayne Yung Schwanzfilm (2011, 5’38’’) Wayne Yung Search Engine (1999, 4’) Étienne Ganjohian Bed, Bugs, Babies (2016, 7’) Mike Hoolboom Frank’s Cock (1993, 8’) Stanley Jackson Cornet at Night (1963, 14’) Vincent Chevalier So When Did You Figure out You had AIDS? (2010, 5’) Clark Nikolai Galactic Docking Company (2009, 3’) Wrik Mead Gravity (1987, 3’) Thirza Cuthand Untouchable (1998, 4’) Paul Wong 60 Unit Bruise (1976, 4’) Jeanne Crépeau L’Usure (1986, 8’) Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Aleesa Cohene The Same Problem (2009, 5’)Still Not Over It, screening, ICI Berlin, 28 June 2018 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e180628