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.

Margaret’s article: “Glyoxalase 1 and its substrate methylglyoxal are novel regulators of seizure susceptibility” has been accepted for publication in EPILEPSIA. Naomi Gorfinkle, an undergraduate in the Palmer Lab is among the list of co-authors.

Dr. Abraham Palmer joins the crew of “The Daily Circuit” on Minnesota Public Radio News to discuss caffeine, how it affects people and how it is marketed. A link to the show can be found here.

In a report by Allison Aubrey on the NPR show “All Things Considered”, Dr. Abraham Palmer discuses  new sources of caffeine in foods and beverages and how caffeine affects people differently. “There’s a lot of variation in the way people experience the effects of caffeine.” Click here to listen to the show and here to read an extended version.

The article: “Does COMT genotype influence the effects of d-amphetamine on executive functioning?” has been accepted for publication in Genes, Brain and Behavior. Authors are Margaret Wardle, Amy Hart, Abraham Palmer and Harriet de Wit.

Riyan and Abe’s article: “A Simulation Study of Permutation, Bootstrap and Gene Dropping for Assessing Statistical Significance in the Case of Unequal Relatedness” has been accepted for publication in genetics.

Clarissa received a prestigious travel award; Abraham was accompanied by Stephanie Dulawa, his wife (they are both Associate Members) and Ariela, his 3 year old daughter. It was Ariela’s 3^rd time at ACNP, meaning that she is among the few people who can honestly say that they’ve never missed ACNP.

Amy’s article: “Candidate gene studies of a promising intermediate phenotype: failure to replicate” has been accepted for publication in Neuropsychopharmacology. You can find the full article here.