Neurogenetics Approaches to Mapping Pathways in Developmental Psychopathology
The field of neurogenetics has emerged over the last decade and has begun to help specify the complex molecular pathways leading from genetic variation to differences in brain structure and function, as well as risk for psychopathology. Here we provide an overview of this relatively new field that includes techniques such as imaging genetics and imaging gene by environment interaction studies and discuss how work in this field has informed our understanding of the development of psychopathology. We discuss how neurogenetics and developmental psychopathology models could inform each other and also review neurogenetics findings in studies of youth internalizing disorders with an emphasis on how research in adults and youth fit together. Throughout this chapter we highlight the ways that developmental neurogenetics studies can help inform our understanding of the development of psychopathology across multiple levels of analysis.
