Amy presented her poster “SNPs associated with stronger positive subjective response to d-amphetamine are significantly enriched for SNPs that increase risk for schizophrenia and ADHD.” The scientific retreat was held at the University of Chicago and featured presentations from the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Harvard, University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Haifa (Israel), Columbia and Stanford. 

Dr. Abraham Palmer was a speaker at a seminar organized by the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Kansas Medical Center. His presentation was entitled “Discovering genes that influence behavior and the challenge of elucidating their mechanism.” Doug Wright was the host of the seminar.

At a seminar organised by the University of Illinois’ Institute of Genomic Biology, Dr. Palmer gave a talk on “Behavioral genetics approaches to psychiatric diseases in mice, rats and men.” The seminar was hosted by Brent Roberts.

Dr. Palmer presented a talk entitled “Is metabolic activity linked to neuronal inhibitory tone and can we exploit such a link for therapeutic purposes?” at the Columbia University Epilepsy Research Seminars. The seminar was hosted by Melodie Winawer.

The article: “Candidate gene studies of a promising intermediate phenotype: failure to replicate” has generated some interest in various social media outlets twitter (and), (and), reddit and multiple blogs and websites. One site ranks it in the top 5 percentile of all scientific articles ranked by attention.

In a report by Allison Aubrey on the NPR show “All Things Considered”, Abraham Palmer discuses the effects of caffeine on bee behavior. A report of the show can be found here and you can click here to listen to the show.

Clarissa Parker has officially accepted an offer for an Assistant Professor position at Middlebury College in Vermont.  Located in the quaint New England town of Middlebury, Vermont, Middlebury College offers scenic mountain views and a rigorous liberal arts curriculum.  It was recently ranked as the 4^th best liberal arts college in the nation by US News and World Report.  Clarissa will be joining the faculty there as an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience.  Congratulations to Clarissa!

Dr. Abraham Palmer presented a talk titled “Quantitative genetic studies of behavior: methodologies, results and why you should care” as part of the University of Michigan Biopsychology Seminar Series.

This project will support two graduate students and two or three postdocs per year. The goal of this project is to train pre- and post-doctoral students in the methodology that will be important for the next generation of progress in understanding the genetics of psychiatric health and disease. The program will emphasize the integration of computational and statistical approaches to complex datasets as well as the use of hypothesis driven laboratory-based experiments. Trainees will be prepared for the coming decades, which will see an acceleration of the trend towards multidisciplinary

The article: “Psychopharmacology of theobromine in healthy volunteers” has been accepted for publication in  Psychopharmacology. Amy and Abe are among the coauthors of the article.