Jitse S. Amelink

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

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐝𝐨 𝐰𝐞 𝐠𝐨 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐠𝐞?

I loved presenting today results from my #PhD at the #Sociogenomics Seminar at the University of Tartu.

Thanks to @ukuvainik.bsky.social for the invite!

Find me at poster 9 tomorrow at the #GeneForum

#language #neuroscience

Key insights⬇️

A Love Letter to Social Science Genetics Some people call social science genetics a minefield. Others call it dangerous, even irresponsible. I call it the most promising field in life sciences.

Some people call it a minefield. Others call it dangerous, even irresponsible. I call it the most promising field in life sciences.

My love letter to social science genetics: communities.springernature.com/posts/a-love...

Remember this? In the 1990s, a popular view of nanotechnology claimed that molecular gears like this, made of diamondoid carbon, were going to be the components of molecular-scale assemblers and nanobots. But that vision hasn't come to pass. My article in Aeon explores why.
aeon.co/essays/no-su...

Multivariate genome-wide association analysis of dyslexia and quantitative reading skill improves gene discovery - Translational Psychiatry Translational Psychiatry - Multivariate genome-wide association analysis of dyslexia and quantitative reading skill improves gene discovery

Multivariate genome-wide association analysis of dyslexia and quantitative reading skill improves gene discovery. New paper by Hayley S. Mountford & al. With Else Eising, @profsimonfisher.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s41398-025-03514-0

A comic of a Zipfian distribution where the curve looks like a dinosaur with head, body & tail

Thanks to the presentation by @anthe.sevenants.net at #SLE2025 today I now know of the Zipfian dinosaur 🦕 and shall henceforth use it in all my stats classes 🤩

Steve Furber powerpoint slide showing picture of Ada Lovelace and a quote: "I have my hopes, and very distinct ones too, of one day getting cerebral phenomena such that I can put them into mathematical equations--in short, a law or laws for the mutual actions of the molecules of brain. .... I hope to bequeath to the generations a calculus of the nervous system."

incredible Ada Lovelace quote highlighted in a talk by Steve Furber. She spells out the dream of computational neuroscience, 2 centuries ago. The sheer ambition 🤩

"I find the type of thinking and writing involved in public-facing science communication joyful. It replenishes my awe and wonder. My value function is deeply driven by curiosity, both in the weeds (where individual scientific projects reside) and at a high level."

#scicomm #joy

For the EU, this should be a very urgent matter of national security. All EU member states should build on Denmark's wise strategy to phase out Microsoft products