Grant: CIHR Fellowship

The biological processes underlying mental disorders are not well known. A limiting factor in their understanding is that mental disorders are complex, multifaceted conditions. Recently, "transdiagnostic" approaches have been proposed, as they may help to unravel the biology of mental disorders. For example, it may be useful to use biology to understand specific cognitive process, rather than attempting to provide an explanation of an entire psychiatric diagnose. Another challenge is that mental disorders often vary by sex. A promising avenue to better understand sex differences could be to link transdiagnostic factors to neurobiology, during key developmental periods for the onset of mental disorders (e.g., puberty). In this context, emotion-related processes are of interest, as they are associated with both sex differences and various mental disorders. Thus, the aim of this project is to identify genetic and neurobiological processes associated with sex differences in mental health, using emotion processing as a transdiagnostic construct. First, I will draw on the existing literature to identify genes associated with emotion processing, and then I will study their brain expression patterns in relation to functional brain activity at rest. Secondly, I will explore the association between the brain processes identified in the first part of this project and psychiatric symptoms, in a longitudinal cohort of boys and girls aged 9-10 years and followed across adolescence. I will also assess the role of emotion processing in the link between brain processes and mental health. The two part of my project will use publicly available data and statistical analyses will include t-test, correlations and linear mixed models. Overall, a better understanding of the biology underlying mental disorders could allow the development of precision psychiatry approaches, potentially maximizing interventions in psychiatry.