1 vote

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

Rodrick Wallace¹

Correspondence: (Login to view email address)

1. Division of Epidemiology, The New York State Psychiatric Institute

PDF (927.4 KB)

Document Type:

Manuscript

Date:

Received 22 October 2009 17:08 UTC; Posted 23 October 2009

Subjects:

Developmental Biology, Genetics & Genomics, Neuroscience

Tags:

• cognition
• culture
• epigenetic
• Information
• mental disorder

Abstract:

We extend a cognitive paradigm for gene expression to the epigenetic epidemiology of mental disorders, recognizing the fundamental role that culture plays in human biology as another heritage mechanism parallel to, and interacting with, the more familiar genetic and epigenetic systems. In the mathematical model, 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. The cultural and epigenetic systems of heritage may well provide the ‘missing’ heritability of complex diseases now under so much intense discussion.

Discussion

Votes:

1 vote

(Login to vote)

Comments:

0 comments

(Login to post a comment)

Share:

(Login to share with a colleague)

Additional information

License:

This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

How to cite this document:

Wallace, Rodrick. The cultural epigenetics of psychopathology: The missing heritability of complex diseases found?. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2009.3894.1> (2009)

Version info:

Other versions of this document in Nature Precedings

Version number	Document title	Date
v2	Posted 11 November 2009

Other versions of this document elsewhere on the web

None known.

Submit a new version link