Jitse S. Amelink

Genomic insights into substance use and disinhibitory disorders Externalizing spectrum disorders- spanning attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, substance use disorders, and other disorders characterized by disinhibition - frequently co-occur...

Our multi-ancestry GWAS of EXTernalizing conditions (ADHD, substance use...) in ~4M people reveals neurodevelopmental risk, drug-repurposing targets, and yields one of the strongest psychiatric polygenic indices yet! 🧬🎉 doi.org/10.64898/202...

Cartoon showing a street in the rain. A man on a bike is delivering food, while another courier is delivering packages from Amazon. Two other workers are collecting garbage. Inside one of the houses on the street, we see robots labeled 'AI' sitting dry and warm, engaged in making a paining, playing the violin and writing.

The robot apocalypse hasn't happened yet, but still I can't escape the feeling that something has gone horribly wrong... Cartoon for Dutch newspaper @trouw.nl.

More of my work for Trouw: www.trouw.nl/cartoons/tje...

#ArtificialIntelligence #creativity #work #GenerativeAI

Why did consciousness evolve at all? A superb special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org brings together experts across disciplines to explore the functions of consciousness and why it emerged in some species but not others. @tecumsehfitch.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

When AI hurts the climate—and when it helps | Talking Climate with Katharine Hayhoe Get more from Talking Climate with Katharine Hayhoe on Patreon

Critiques of AI are valid; but many climate-based arguments reveal our bias toward small individual actions over real systemic change.

e.g. ⬇️

An LLM query = running a microwave for seconds
An hour of Netflix = enough to make popcorn

Yet few are boycotting their fav shows.

Interested? Read more:

Last week, our new paper on indirect assortative mating was published.🍾 Let’s take a closer look at what this means, why it matters, and what we found (🧵/32):

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Evaluating the effects of archaic protein-altering variants in living human adults Promise and pitfalls of using large biobanks to study impacts of archaic protein-coding variants in living humans.

While stories of singular DNA changes that drove evolution of human brain/behaviour remain seductive, advances across multiple fields of biology cast doubt on such simplistic narratives of our origins. A new paper from my lab shows how biobanks may speak to this fundamental question.🧪
Explainer🧵👇1/n

Integrating brain structure and function for the neurobiology and genetics of language www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... New study in which @jsamelink.bsky.social examined brain data from >32,000 people from @ukbiobank.bsky.social ... 1/4 ⬇️

The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered Not with a bang but with a whimper

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

Super proud of this fabulous team for challenging old comparative frameworks and rethinking what makes language language.
Read more in the thread below 👇 or here 📖😊: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

What enables human language? A biocultural framework Explaining the origins of language is a key challenge in understanding ourselves as a species. We present an empirical framework that draws on synergies across fields to facilitate robust studies of l...

Origins of language, one of humanity’s most distinctive traits, may be best explained as a unique convergence of multiple capacities each with its own evolutionary history, involving intertwined roles of biology & culture. This framing can expand research horizons. A 🧵 on our @science.org paper.🧪1/n

Genomic Investigations of Spoken and Written Language Abilities: A Guide to Advances in Approaches, Technologies, and Discovery Purpose: The aim of this tutorial is to show how the rise of molecular technologies and analytical methods in human genetics yields exciting new ...

If you're interested in how advances in human genomics are transforming our understanding of the biology of spoken & written language abilities, please do check out my new peer-reviewed "tutorial" article, just published.
🗣️🧬🧪
[Will also make a Bsky explainer 🧵 on it next week when I get some time🙂.]

Better schools can compensate for dispositions

‘Change course now’: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head Exclusive: ‘Devastating consequences’ now inevitable but emissions cuts still vital, says António Guterres in sole interview before Cop30

As the single most important news story this year, I can't wait to see the detailed and central coverage this will get in every media outlet we have

OPEN PHD POSITION - Come join our group! The IMPRS at @mpi-nl.bsky.social is offering an PhD position on modelling structured meaning in the brain, supervised by me and Helen De Hoop at the Centre for Language Studies in the @dondersinst.bsky.social -
www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe... #NeuroJobs #cogsci

Honestly, highly recommended! Very nice and diverse environment, excellent facilities!

Photograph of researchers at their benches in the custom-built molecular biology labs of the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen, with green trees of the forest outside visible through large windows in the background.

Come join us for a 4-year PhD on effects of rare gene disruptions involved in speech disorder, investigated in human neuronal models (via gene-editing, tissue culture, brain organoids, high-res microscopy, transcriptomics, epigenomics).
More info: www.mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fe...
#AcademicJobs #PhDJobs
🧬🧪

John Searle (1932-2025) - Daily Nous Philosopher John Searle, well-known for his work on philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, has died. John Searle wrote extensively consciousness and the mind, intentionality, and speech act th...

Philosopher of mind John Searle has left the building
dailynous.com/2025/09/28/j...

He was best known for his Chinese Room Argument on artificial intelligence and wide-ranging work on the mind and consciousness

Ode to the original language model, or:
Give me literally Anything* instead of Large Language Models (LLMs)
*(no predictive coding either!)

By Lady Byronadrea LLMartin 1/n

The phylogenetic position of the Yunxian cranium elucidates the origin of Homo longi and the Denisovans Diverse forms of Homo coexisted during the Middle Pleistocene. Whether these fossil humans represent different species or clades is debated. The ~1-million-year-old Yunxian 2 fossil from China is impo...

At points of our evolutionary history multiple Homo lineages coexisted. Insights into these depend mainly on rare fossil crania, damaged & deformed by age. Removing such distortions, new reconstructions of a 1-million-yr-old cranium from China suggest a surprising mix of primitive & derived traits:🧪

Musical rhythm abilities and risk for developmental speech-language problems and disorders: epidemiological and polygenic associations - Nature Communications Impaired musical rhythm abilities and developmental speech-language related disorders are biologically and clinically intertwined. Here, the authors explore the correlation between the two traits, finding evidence of epidemiological associations and genetic overlap.

New paper alert! Systematic epidemiological analyses of up to 39,000 people illuminate biological/clinical links between impaired musical rhythm abilities & disorders affecting speech-language development. International collaboration led by @drsrishtin.bsky.social, out in @natcomms.nature.com. 👇🧪

Within-family heritability estimates for behavioural and disease phenotypes from 500,000 sibling pairs of diverse ancestries Quantification of the direct effect of genetic variation on human behavioural traits is important for understanding between-individual variation in socio-economic and health outcomes but estimates of ...

Massive sibling regression study finds that human traits are largely environmentally driven (average heritability = 0.3)

Pure bloodlines? Ancestral homelands? DNA science says no. — Harvard Gazette Geneticist explains recent analyses made possible by tech advances show human history to be one of mixing, movement, displacement.

“The big perspective change from ancient DNA study is that people living today are almost never the descendants of the people in the same place thousands of years before”

news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

Pan-UK Biobank genome-wide association analyses enhance discovery and resolution of ancestry-enriched effects - Nature Genetics Genome-wide analyses for 7,266 traits leveraging data from several genetic ancestry groups in UK Biobank identify new associations and enhance resources for interpreting risk variants across diverse p...

A project many years in the process, we’re pleased to present our work on multi-ancestry meta-analysis across a boatload of traits in the UK Biobank: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Taps side of head… can’t get bored if I never truly specialize!

I've only read the abstract and I already know this paper is so very correct 👀

Cerebellar growth is associated with domain-specific cerebral maturation and socio-linguistic behavioral outcomes The cerebellum's involvement in cognitive functions is increasingly recognized, yet its developmental contribution to cognition remains poorly understood. The cerebellum undergoes rapid development in...

Another social cerebellar dream team effort: Cerebellar growth is associated with domain-specific cerebral maturation and socio-linguistic behavioural outcomes - thanks Katerina Manoli and co for wonderful work! Thanks also to @imprsconi.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New @maxplanck.de study: We looked for left-right differences of gene expression and cell-type abundances in the brains of MICE 🐭using Xenium @10xgenomics.bsky.social. Possible clues to how functional brain asymmetry is supported !! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Short thread below ⬇️

Key insights (2):
➡️ Key language connectivity genes include EPHA3, PLCE1 and INPP5A
➡️ Brain traits relate to language-related polygenic scores
➡️ We observe genetic enrichment for evolutionary relevant loci
➡️ Exome provides additional insight into brain connectivity

Key insights (1):
➡️ Gene mapping is associative in nature
➡️ Neuroimaging is an informative intermediate for language
➡️ Different brain traits both yield different genetics and converge