Early Trauma and Increased Risk for Physical Aggression during Adulthood: The Moderating Role of MAOA Genotype

Previous research has reported that a functional polymorphism in the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene promoter can moderate the association between early life adversity and increased risk for violence and antisocial behavior. In this study of a combined population of psychiatric outpatients and healthy volunteers (N = 235), we tested the hypothesis that MAOA genotype moderates the association between early traumatic life events (ETLE) experienced during the first 15 years of life and the display of physical aggression during adulthood, as assessed by the Aggression Questionnaire. An ANOVA model including gender, exposure to early trauma, and MAOA genotype as between-subjects factors showed significant MAOA×ETLE (F1,227 = 8.20, P = 0.005) and gender×MAOA×ETLE (F1,227 = 7.04, P = 0.009) interaction effects. Physical aggression scores were higher in men who had experienced early traumatic life events and who carried the low MAOA activity allele (MAOA-L). We repeated the analysis in the subgroup of healthy volunteers (N = 145) to exclude that the observed G×E interactions were due to the inclusion of psychiatric patients in our sample and were not generalizable to the population at large. The results for the subgroup of healthy volunteers were identical to those for the entire sample. The cumulative variance in the physical aggression score explained by the ANOVA effects involving the MAOA polymorphism was 6.6% in the entire sample and 12.1% in the sub-sample of healthy volunteers. Our results support the hypothesis that, when combined with exposure to early traumatic life events, low MAOA activity is a significant risk factor for aggressive behavior during adulthood and suggest that the use of dimensional measures focusing on behavioral aspects of aggression may increase the likelihood of detecting significant gene-by-environment interactions in studies of MAOA-related aggression

Introduction

Giovanni Frazzetto, Introduction to the lecture Noga Arikha, ‘Humoural Bodies and Balanced Minds’, part of the conference Situating Mental Illness, ICI Berlin, 29 April 2011, video recording, mp4, 03:08 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e110429-1_2

Embryos, cells and God

Different religious beliefs have little consensus on controversial issues such as cloning and stem-cell researc

Contribution

Giovanni Frazzetto, Contribution to the reading SAND Journal Launch, ICI Berlin, 5 May 2010, video recording, mp4, 18:21 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e100505_4

Who did what?

Uneasiness with the current authorship system is prompting the scientific community to seek alternative

Introduction

Giovanni Frazzetto, Introduction to the lecture Lisa Appignanesi, ‘Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors’, part of the conference Situating Mental Illness, ICI Berlin, 28 April 2011, video recording, mp4, 04:34 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e110428-1_2

Situating Mental Illness:Between Scientific Certainty and Personal Narrative

Contemporary neuroscience reduces mental illness to brain-based operations, instantiating a division between biology and culture, mechanism and context, brain and biography. This has the effect of marginalising a richer, inner-subjective complex of individual meaning, personal history and narrative. This meeting surveys recent significant shifts in biological psychiatry methods for the assessment of mental illness and questions their validity and limitations. It also explores nuances and interstices between the regard of psychiatric disorders as neurochemical flaws or experiential conditions, the cultural history of psychopathologies and how brain-based accounts of mental illness circulate in the public domain and are incorporated in culture. The meeting unfolds into three main sessions: 1. Tensions of Diagnosis The current neuroscience set of co-circulating methods including diagnostic categories, behaviour rating scales, animal models and biological markers implies a superimposition of subjective symptoms, neurochemical markers and objective endophenotypology.  What are the advantages and limitations to the introduction of biological measures in DSM-V? What are their repercussions for epidemiology, criteria of inclusion in trials and treatment? The scope of this session is to illustrate difficulties conciliating validity/reliability of measurements with respect for heterogeneity in disease manifestation, both at the biological and phenomenological level and to bring emerging evidence from clinical, epidemiological and biological research, as well as sociological analysis. 2. Voices from Within The second session will be specifically devoted to exploring nuances and interstices between psychiatric disorder as neurochemical flaws and experiential condition, which have gone lost in favour of measurability, and thus standardization. Attention will be given to the role of narratives and personal accounts in illustrating differences in severity and sequence of symptoms as well as values and motivations among patients behind biological interpretation of illness, and pharmaceutical treatment. 3. Neurotransmitters and Psychopathology in History and Culture In the final session, we will explore the history of certain psychopathologies and how brain-based accounts of mental illness circulate in the public domain and are incorporated in culture. What ideas and representations of ‘illness’ do biological interpretations let circulate in culture? How are they welcomed, endorsed or resisted by the general public? What scientific or commonsensical ideas do we live by to describe and explain illness, and what is their valence?Situating Mental Illness: Between Scientific Certainty and Personal Narrative, conference, ICI Berlin, 28–29 April 2011 <https://doi.org/10.25620/e110428

Time for an overhaul?

The French system to fund and organize research faces various challenges in the near future. To keep up with other countries, it has to undergo some fundamental change