The Future of Behavioural Genetics

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The Future of Behavioural Genetics
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Quantitative Genetics

• More fine-grained cognitive abilities,
  personality traits, disorders, childhood origins
• Integrating genetics with neural imaging
• Development of new areas of health psychology and
  aging

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Driving Forces

• Traditional questions whether and how much
  genetic factors affect behaviour, disorders
• Now starting to get to the question of how

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Molecular Genetics

• No longer looking for the gene for a trait
• Multiple genes (Quantitative trait loci),
  interactions, epistasis, epigenesis
• Pathways between genes and behaviour
• Bottom-up functional genomics meeting top-down
  behavioural genomics
• Genetic brain mapping

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Nature, Nurture

• Now generally recognized to be nature and nurture
• New technologies and public awareness, e.g., home
  test kits, gene chips
• Societal effects
• Government, law, ethnic and cultural organizations