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Navigation for This Section: Center for Integration of Research on Genetics and Ethics
Abstract:Psychiatric disorders and behavior are influenced by genes and environment. There is clear evidence now that genetic and environmental factors work together in complex ways at molecular and clinically observable levels. First, genes do not operate in a deterministic fashion and are known to co-act with different environmental risk factors. Second, environmental influences can play an important role in mediating genetic risk effects. Third, environmental stimuli and adversity have varying effects on different individuals. There is increasing evidence that genes play an important role in influencing sensitivity to different environmental factors. During this presentation, a brief description of the methods used to examine gene-environment interplay, illustrated by some key findings and the implications of this type of research are discussed.
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About Dr. Thapar
Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Cardiff University
Anita Thapar qualified in medicine in 1985. She undertook clinical training in psychiatry following which she became a Medical Research Council Clinical Research Training Fellow at the Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Wales College of Medicine. During her research training fellowship she attained a PhD in Genetic Epidemiology and, in 1996, was appointed as Senior Lecturer in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Manchester. She returned to Cardiff in 1999 and became Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
She is currently secretary and treasurer for the UK Child Psychiatry Research Society, on the editorial board of a number of psychiatry journals and on The Wellcome Trust Cognitive and Higher Systems Funding Committee. She was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics working party on "Genetics and human behaviour: the ethical context" and is a co-editor on the latest version of the Rutter Textbook of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Her research interests are in the genetic aetiology of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders and gene-environment interplay.
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