Mats Nagel
Short CV
| 2014 – current | PhD candidate at the Complex Trait Genetics Lab, CNCR, Amsterdam UMC |
| 2012 – 2014 | Statistics teacher at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Psychology & the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies |
| 2010 – 2012 | Master Psychological Methods at the University of Amsterdam [Cum laude] |
| 2006 – 2010 | Bachelor Psychology at the University of Amsterdam |
Research
PhD project: Modeling the dynamics of behavior
Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) have boosted the gene-finding enterprise, and made important contributions to medicine and pharmaceutics. However, overall the yield has been lower than expected. Only a limited number of genetic variants have been discovered for heritable complex traits (e.g., intelligence, MDD, ADHD, autism, schizophrenia) and even these genetic variants usually account for very little phenotypic variance.
A reason for the relatively low yield of GWAS may lie in the way behaviour is conceptualized. Often phenotypic data (e.g. items on a personality test, symptoms from the DSM-IV) are reduced to a univariate composite score, such as a sumscore. Although this makes analyses computationally feasible, information about the complexity of the behaviour may be lost in the process, since the items or symptoms collectively operationalizing one trait can be very diverse in nature. Depending on how genetically similar items or symptoms underlying a trait are, using a composite score may not be an optimal approach if the aim is to unravel the biological background.
In this project, we acknowledge the complexity of behaviour. We aim to conduct analyses on symptoms or items underlying psychiatric disorders (e.g. depression, anxiety) and psychological traits (e.g. neuroticism), and contrast the results to the traditional approach of using a composite measure. Eventually, this may aid in constructing genetically coherent subdimensions that can be used as targets of investigation in future studies.
Highlighted publications
- Nagel M, Jansen PR, Stringer S, Watanabe K, de Leeuw CA, Bryois J, Savage JE, Hammerschlag AR, Skene N, Muñoz-Manchado AB, the 23andMe Research Team, White TJH, Tiemeier H, Linnarsson S, Hjerling-Leffler J, Polderman TJC, Sullivan PF, van der Sluis S, Posthuma D. Meta-Analysis of Genome-wide Association Studies for Neuroticism in 449,484 Individuals Identifies Novel Genetic Loci and Pathways. Nature Genetics, July 2018, DOI: 10.1038/s41588-018-0151-7
- Nagel M, Watanabe K, Stringer S, Posthuma D, van der Sluis S. Item-level analyses reveal genetic heterogeneity in neuroticism. Nature Communications, March 2018, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03242-8
Contact info
| Address: | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
|---|---|
| Telephone: | +31 20 598 75 74 |
| E-mail: | m.nagel@vu.nl |