week 3 discussion

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Please choose one of the following questions to discuss:

  1. Many people adopt children, and studies indicate that there are similarities among adoptive families. Some researchers are concerned that these similarities will enhance genetic differences among adopted children, and thus impact the results of adoption studies. What impact may be expected by adoptive family similarity and why would this affect studies that compare environmental and genetic influences?

    or

  2. Research has demonstrated that Alzheimer’s disease is more likely to occur in individuals with two E4 alleles that in individuals with one or two of the E2 or E3 alleles (Huang et al., 2011). Discuss another example of how different allele variation influences a particular disease or disorder (e.g., long allele on serotonin transporter associated with increased risk for MDD).

Huang, Y., Zheng, L., Halliday, G., Dobson-Stone, C., Wang, Y., Tang, H. D., … & Wang, J. H. (2011). Genetic polymorphisms in sigma-1 receptor and apolipoprotein E interact to influence the severity of Alzheimer’s disease. Current Alzheimer research, 8(7), 765-770.

Examples (note- there are MANY more):

  • BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism
  • Serotonin transporter 5-HTTLPR polymorphism
  • 5-Hydroxytryptamine 1A Receptor Gene polymorphism
  • Oxytocin receptor gene polymorphism (rs2254298)
  • Interleukin‐1 gene polymorphism

 Complete the following readings from your textbook: Freberg, L. (2019). Discovering Behavioral Neuroscience: An Introduction to Biological Psychology (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, Inc.

  • Chapter 5: Genetics and the Development of the Human Brain

In addition, read the following article: