Maggie Clapp Sullivan

Maggie Clapp Sullivan

@mclapps.bsky.social

WashU Postdoc with a UT PhD. Using multivariate genetic methods to study personality, cog aging, and substance use.

509 followers191 following23 posts

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

While the majority of PGI-phenotype associations were stable over time, we also find that aspects of some Big 5 traits have stronger PGI associations at later ages. For example, greater agreeableness PGIs were only associated with more prosocial behavior at ages 11-13, and not at ages 9-11.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

In addition to our cross-sectional PheWAS, we use a multivariate approach to investigate how PGI-phenotype associations might change between ages 9-11 and 11-13, and we follow up significant PheWAS associations with within-sibling PGI analyses.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

We find that the big 5 PGIs in children are associated with traits typically measured by the big 5 in adults - for example, greater neuroticism PGIs were associated with greater worrying, and greater openness PGIs were associated with greater daydreaming.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

We use phenome-wide association, a hypothesis-free approach that examines associations between a PGI and many phenotypes, to examine associations between personality PGIs, behaviors, and outcomes at two timepoints (ages 9-11 and 11-13) in the ABCD study.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

Luca Sclisizzo
@luca-sclisizzo.bsky.social

🚨 New Preprint out! What if psychosis is not a single, homogeneous construct? "Parsing the functional heterogeneity of psychosis spectrum" addresses this question defining a genetic gradient across the spectrum. 🧬 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

medrxiv.orgParsing the Functional Heterogeneity of the Psychosis Spectrum: A Clinically Informed Application of Genomic Structural Equation ModelingSchizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression vary in their age of onset, cognitive impacts, degree of impairment, and clinical course. However, since psychosis is a transdiagnostic feature th...

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

Ted Schwaba
@tedmond.bsky.social

Some coverage of our Big Five GWAS! (with quotes by @tuckerdrob.bsky.social) After reading the comments section I am now in favor of compulsory psychometrics education.

nytimes.comScientists Find More Than 1,000 DNA Variants Linked to Personality Traits (Gift Article)More than one million genomes helped identify DNA variants linked to extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and more. Researchers measured how those traits influenced how people lived.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH
@gavinyamey.bsky.social

Studies RFK Jr canceled: -Training rural healthcare workers to better respond to maternal medical emergencies -Improving healthcare delivery systems for patients to access home dialysis -Improving autism screening, diagnosis, & services among Black children www.medpagetoday.com/washington-w...

medpagetoday.comSenators Blast RFK Jr. Over AHRQ Grant Cancellations'We demand that you immediately rescind these cancellations,' says group of Democrats

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

jdelafuente.bsky.social
@jdelafuente.bsky.social

1/9 🚨 BREAKING OUT OF STEALTH MODE 🚨 Multivariate GWAS in Genomic SEM now runs on a laptop! New preprint + package update: a closed-form analytic solution makes multivariate GWAS ~800× faster, cutting runtimes from hours on HPC clusters to minutes on a personal computer.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

Ted Schwaba
@tedmond.bsky.social

This reviewer is a perfect illustration of a person with good intentions, who I probably agree with on a ton of things, who starts from the premise that "it is bad if things are partially heritable, so they cannot be" and then works from there. Acknowledging genetics is not endorsing eugenics!

lareviewofbooks.orgNatural Election | Los Angeles Review of BooksKathryn Paige Harden’s new book offers a defense of a kind of Scientific Calvinism that converges with the eugenicist ideals of the contemporary Far Right.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

Rosa Cheesman
@rosacheesman.bsky.social

1/ 🚨New paper in Nature Genetics Genetic factors are associated with the educational fields people study, from arts to engineering. Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41... FAQ: www.thehastingscenter.org/genomic-find...

nature.comGenetic associations with educational fields - Nature GeneticsGenome-wide analyses of 10 educational fields identify 17 associated loci. Analysis of genetic clustering across specializations identifies two key dimensions that show genetic overlap with personalit...

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

Elliot Tucker-Drob
@tuckerdrob.bsky.social

Non-paywalled link to my commentary on @vw1234.bsky.social and colleagues new paper in @nature.com rdcu.be/eI2NG

rdcu.beEarly- and late-diagnosed autism are genetically distinct | NatureAnalyses of symptoms and genomic data indicate that autism that manifests in early childhood is distinct from autism that is diagnosed later in development. Analyses of symptoms and genomic data indicate that autism that manifests in early childhood is distinct from autism that is diagnosed later in development.
This post is unavailable.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

Elliot Tucker-Drob
@tuckerdrob.bsky.social

A deep and thought-provoking lecture that is definitely worth watching all the way through.

Eric Turkheimer@ent3c.bsky.social

My Dobzhansky lecture at BGA: "Theodosius Dobzhansky and the Origins of Radical Behavior Genetics" is publicly available. I talk about the tensions introduced into the field at the difficult border between science using model organisms and human beings. Thanks to BGA for the opportunity.

vimeo.comSat_208_Dobzhansky_LectureDobzhansky Lecture by Eric Turkheimer

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

Ted Schwaba
@tedmond.bsky.social

Out today, our method for comparing multivariate genetic architecture across groups of people, called Genomic Structural Invariance: www.nature.com/articles/s41... (feat: @tuckerdrob.bsky.social @michelnivard.bsky.social @andrewgrotzinger.bsky.social @mijke.bsky.social @jorsmo.bsky.social et al.)

nature.comComparison of the multivariate genetic architecture of eight major psychiatric disorders across sex - Nature GeneticsGenomic structural invariance, an extension of genomic structural equation modeling, identifies similarities and differences between males and females in the genetic architectures of eight psychiatric...

Maggie Clapp Sullivan reposted

Elliot Tucker-Drob
@tuckerdrob.bsky.social

Are mental disorders extreme manifestations of continuous traits or genetically distinct entities? We present Genomic Taxometric Analysis of Continuous and Case-Control data (GTACCC) for evaluating genetic continuity and differentiation of traits across the severity spectrum. Tweetorial coming soon.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

Even when the factor model is correct, we observe some variants with specific effects. Variants in the APOE region are not generally associated with all cognitive tasks. Rather, they are associated with “fluid” tasks which decline with age, but not “crystallized” tasks.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

We can see this in the results of a simple simulation. Here, although the square correlations matrices (intercorrelations among phenotypes) are indistinguishable, the rectangular matrices (associations with individual genetic variants) differ starkly.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

However, if the common factor is an illusion- a statistical artifact of aggregation- then we should observe individual genetic variants that are associated with subsets of the phenotypes, but not variants that are associated with all phenotypes.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) quantify associations between genetic variants and phenotypes. We can leverage GWAS data to resolve the factor indeterminacy problem and test the validity of latent variables.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

If the common factor model is correct, then we should observe individual genetic variants that are associated with all of the phenotypes composing that factor (the SNP effects should be proportional to the factor loadings).

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

That’s factor indeterminacy: just because a set of correlations is consistent with a common factor doesn’t mean that we can rule out other types of causal models. So what do we do about factor indeterminacy?

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

Researchers have suggested breaking down cognitive tasks into “elementary processes” to identify components that correlate with the phenotypes but are uncorrelated with one another. Such a set of variables could be used to test whether a general factor was the true causal model.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

To make this a little more salient, let’s look at some correlation matrices. These matrices show the correlation among 9 phenotypes. Here’s one that was generated by a common factor model, where one shared cause influences all of the phenotypes in the correlation matrix.

Maggie Clapp Sullivan
@mclapps.bsky.social

Many social scientists use latent variables to capture variables that cannot be directly observed (extraversion, intelligence). However, the correlations we use to infer latent factors can result from alternative data generating mechanisms. We refer to this problem as factor indeterminacy.

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