Abdel Abdellaoui

Follow up on the genetics of chills from art and poetry. This time, including chills from music too 🧵 ⬇️

Genetic underpinnings of chills from art and music Author summary Many people experience chills when listening to music, reading poetry, or viewing art. Yet not everyone feels these reactions in the same way. These differences provide a window into ho...

A particular moment in my favourite Radiohead song always gives me goosebumps every time I play it. Turns out susceptibility to such “chills” (induced by music, poetry, art) varies between people & that genetic differences play a part. Check out our new paper, led by @giacomobignardi.bsky.social. 👇🧪

Over the course of 2025, UKB researchers were forced to move all of their data analysis to the cloud rather than working with local copies. What was the effect of this move on scientific output? Here is a simple first pass at answering that question.

Have you ever wondered about nonlinearity in bivariate genetic associations? Or wondered whether global estimators like genetic correlations tell the full story about the relationship between two phenotypes, then check out @michelnivard.bsky.social thread on some work we’ve been doing to model this.

Dissecting polygenic signals from genome-wide association studies on human behaviour - Nature Human Behaviour Genome-wide association studies of behavioural traits can generate predictive polygenic signals. Abdellaoui and Verweij review key developments in this field and explain how advances in methods and da...

I agree: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Looking forward to this year's Behavior Genetics Association (BGA) conference, in my hometown of Amsterdam!

Deadline for abstracts is next week, February 16th: bga.org/content.aspx...

Ahoy! Call for papers now open for this year's amazing ESSGN conference - returning to the beautiful Bologna. Have anything to present at the intersection of the social sciences and genetics? Don't miss!

Critique as Care: Reflections on Social Science Genetics Research By: Nadia Harerimana, ESSGN doctoral candidate at MPIB.All views expressed are those of the author. When people ask what I study, I usually hesitate before answering. Saying “social science genetic…

ESSGN doctoral candidate Nadia Harerimana writes a personal reflection on critique as care in social science genetics.

essgn.org/2026/01/30/c...

Me and @aysuo.bsky.social talk to @sjoerdalten.bsky.social about economics and genetics. And we get some book recommendations. Neat!

New episode of Born and Raised out now, with @sjoerdalten.bsky.social, covering where economics and modern genetic methods meet. Don't miss!

<em>Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry</em> | ACAMH Pediatric Journal | Wiley Online Library Background From a functionalist perspective, parenting behaviors have adaptive functions and are partly expressions of genetic variation. Maternal genes that have effects on children are often refer...

Article alert!🚨
1/11 Parents matter - and we can quantify part of that influence genetically. Our new JCPP paper on multivariate indirect maternal genetic effects across internalizing and externalizing symptoms. doi.org/10.1111/jcpp...
#jcpp @uio.no @unioslo-svfak.bsky.social @unioslo-uv.bsky.social

📢🧬 Call for Papers — 5th ESSGN Conference
📍 Bologna, May 21–22, 2026

I’ll be co-organising the 5th ESSGN conference in Bologna together with Nicola Barban, Stephanie von Hinke, Paul Hufe, and Niels Rietveld @essgn.bsky.social

📄 Submit here: forms.gle/fmVDUrQqQYju...
🗓 Deadline: 1 March 2026

Congratulations! @giacomobignardi.bsky.social receives the Frank X. Barron Award for his superior contributions to the psychology of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts as a student. The American Psychological Association honors his research on genetic effects on the perception of art🎶

New paper alert! 🎉 Congrats to the whole team! 👏

We did dance and mental health research 💃🕺 Professional, but not recreational dancers, have higher risk for mental health problems (anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion). Dance achievement was more heritable in females (60%) than males (29%) 🧬 doi.org/10.1016/j.ss... @ae.mpg.de

A network of metabolites and their potential causal relationships. Green edges are Detected by the statistical causal inference method MR-link-2

Our paper, MR-link-2 has just been published! Offering pleiotropy robust Mendelian randomization from a single region! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Behind the scenes

Thanks for having me! Looking forward to all the other episodes, this is one to follow! 🧬🌆

🎙️Out now: the first episode of the new @essgn.bsky.social podcast by @rafaelahlskog.bsky.social @aysuo.bsky.social, featuring @dr-appie.bsky.social

essgn.podbean.com/e/1-abdel-ab...

Me and @aysuo.bsky.social did a thing. Give it a listen!

Exciting news! Today marks the start of the podcast Born and Raised - produced by the ESSGN. In this very first episode, our hosts have visited @dr-appie.bsky.social in his office at the AUMC. Shocking revelations ensue! Find it on essgn.podbean.com or on the podcast platform of your choice.

One more week before the deadline of the Amsterdam UMC Fellowship (= €750k + tenure track): werkenbij.amsterdamumc.org/en/nieuws/tr...

Genetic influences of educational outcomes during and after the Soviet era: Revisiting evidence from Estonia The origins of individual differences in socioeconomic outcomes, including educational attainment and occupational status, reflect a combination of genetic and environmental factors whose relative con...

Previous work suggested that the role of genes in educational attainment was higher in contemporary Estonia than during the Soviet era. With a tenfold larger dataset, our new preprint finds limited evidence to support this.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

“Psychiatric disorders … seem to arise more often … when certain combinations of genes and life experiences come together in unfavourable ways. This should reframe mental illness not as defective biology, but as the unfortunate intersection of natural variation and environmental stress.”

Thank you Josi! I hope you enjoyed the commentary 😊

I make my plots with a combination of R and Adobe Illustrator, see post below!

The Figure in the commentary also had some post-editing done by the Nature house-editor.

bsky.app/profile/dr-a...

This very interesting project has finally been published. Congratulations! They find stronger genetic associations with place of residence than place of birth for many traits, showing that population stratification also involves active rGE. Read @iakuznetsov.bsky.social's thread here:

Seeing one of my favorite projects replicated in another big biobank from another country is an excellent start of the year!

Thank you @iakuznetsov.bsky.social and colleagues (@ukuvainik.bsky.social!) at @estbiobank.bsky.social!

The original @nathumbehav.nature.com paper: rdcu.be/eX5ID

Thread 👇🏾

Remember the famous UKB migration paper? We found that internal migration also shapes population structure in Estonia. Key patterns replicate within families.

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

@dr-appie.bsky.social showed how migration affects genetic population structure in UK. @iakuznetsov.bsky.social has replicated the same effect in Estonia! Even within siblings! 👬

See thread for more 👇

Here is a rare opportunity to become a PhD student in Amsterdam with the talented psychiatrist/statistical geneticist Wouter Peyrot and work on genetic risk prediction in psychiatry: werkenbij.amsterdamumc.org/en/vacatures...