Evolution and psychiatric disorders:One of my main goals has been to develop a deep understanding of modern evolutionary genetic theory and research, and to introduce those ideas into psychiatric genetics and evolutionary psychology. The effects of distal inbreeding on psychiatric disorders: Much of my current work involves testing whether psychiatric disorders show inbreeding depression. Inbreeding depression, which refers to reduced fitness among offspring of related parents, provides clues to the evolutionary genetics of traits. Development of methods to uncover the genetic architecture of traits: A final focus of my research has been the development of new behavioral genetic models that can help us better estimate causes of interpersonal differences. This ties in with my other research because the genetic architecture of traits (e.g., the level of genetic dominance) is influenced by the evolutionary factors that have shaped the trait ancestrally.
keywords
use of whole-genome SNP data for testing hypotheses related to human behavioral genetic variation and human evolution
