Re:The Mystery of Urban Psychosis
by gwern on Saturday July 16, 2016 @09:02PM
(#12108532)
Some, but definitely not all. OP undersell Sariaslan's study, as you can tell by the title of it: "Schizophrenia and subsequent neighborhood deprivation: revisiting the social drift hypothesis using population, twin and molecular genetic data" http://www.nature.com/tp/journal/v6/n5/full/tp201662a.html
The 'molecular genetic data' there refers to using schizophrenia GWAS hits to directly measure genetic schizophrenia risk and using individuals' genes to predict drift:
> Third, we investigated to what extent polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia predicted residence in deprived neighborhoods during late adulthood using the TwinGene sample (n=6796)...the association between polygenic risk for schizophrenia and neighborhood deprivation was statistically significant (R2=0.15%, P=0.002). Our findings are primarily consistent with a genetic selection interpretation where genetic liability for schizophrenia also predicts subsequent residence in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods.
Since schizophrenia genes cause getting diagnosed with schizophrenia, and also predict living in deprived urban areas, at least some of the common causation must be people's genes.
I like Sariaslan's paper a lot, because of how overkill it is: he uses three independent methods and large datasets (one population-sized) to triangulate the same unexpected & unpopular result - it's pretty much impossible to dispute the drift hypothesis now.
As GWASes continue to identify SNPs and create powerful polygenic scores, you can expect to see more of this: parallel confirmation of long-standing behavioral genetics results.
The 'molecular genetic data' there refers to using schizophrenia GWAS hits to directly measure genetic schizophrenia risk and using individuals' genes to predict drift:
> Third, we investigated to what extent polygenic risk scores for schizophrenia predicted residence in deprived neighborhoods during late adulthood using the TwinGene sample (n=6796)...the association between polygenic risk for schizophrenia and neighborhood deprivation was statistically significant (R2=0.15%, P=0.002). Our findings are primarily consistent with a genetic selection interpretation where genetic liability for schizophrenia also predicts subsequent residence in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods.
Since schizophrenia genes cause getting diagnosed with schizophrenia, and also predict living in deprived urban areas, at least some of the common causation must be people's genes.
I like Sariaslan's paper a lot, because of how overkill it is: he uses three independent methods and large datasets (one population-sized) to triangulate the same unexpected & unpopular result - it's pretty much impossible to dispute the drift hypothesis now.
As GWASes continue to identify SNPs and create powerful polygenic scores, you can expect to see more of this: parallel confirmation of long-standing behavioral genetics results.