The epigenetic effect dynamics of psychopathology during late adulthood

• Applicant: Dr. Robert Miller
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: Funded in 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 322777527

The Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Ageing (SATSA) is an internationally renowned prospective cohort study that was established in the 1980ies to longitudinally investigate the psychobiological determinants of normative and pathological ageing. By integrating data from self-report questionnaires and blood specimens that have been sampled in this study since 1992, the present research proposal is concerned with the identification and characterization of the epigenetic markers of general and internalizing psychopathological symptomatology (henceforth referred to as depressive mood) during late adulthood.In order to pursue these goals, Dr. Sara Hägg (Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden) invited me to investigate the longitudinal association between according symptoms and the epigenom in the SATSA as a visiting fellow. An according research stay in Dr. Häggs laboratory is currently scheduled from August 2016 until December 2016, and is supposed to achieve the following aims:(A) Exploratory and confirmatory identification of epigenetic markers that are predictive of the manifestation of general psychopathology and its subsidiary factors with a particular focus on depressive mood.(B) Separation of the predictive epigenetic variance into components that are attributable to common genetic effects, as well as common and unique environmental effects, which is enabled by the twin design of the SATSA.(C) Investigation of the temporal dynamics (i.e. the individual stability and cross-lagged impact) of epigenetic markers towards psychopathological symptomatology, and vice versa, which is enabled by the longitudinal sampling protocol of the SATSA.Besides conventional approaches to the analysis of high-dimensional omics data, the outlined research aims will be adressed using different statistical models, that enable the proper quantification of intraindividual stability and variability of epigenetic markers.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: Sweden
• Host: Professorin Dr. Sara Hägg, Ph.D.