Childhood maltreatment has a profound impact on both the short- and long-term wellbeing of children. Specifically, children with autism and those with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder have a higher risk to experience maltreatment than those with typical development. However, the reasons why this is happening, are unclear. Two studies will be conducted. The first study will investigate the relationship between childhood maltreatment and ADHD. Studies support an association between ADHD and maltreatment: Children with ADHD have higher risk of experience maltreatment than those without ADHD, as well as people who suffered childhood maltreatment have high levels of ADHD symptoms and diagnosis. Also, parental ADHD and/or experience of maltreatment could influence the strength of this association. So, we will define and analyse how genetic and social factors affect the association between ADHD and childhood maltreatment, and then how this could be developed through generations. Having assessed and display the association between ADHD and childhood maltreatment, the second study will go a step forward searching the experience of physical abuse and harsh parenting in children with ADHD and children with autism. We will conduct a comparison between children with ADHD and children with autism trying to understand how the different traits of each condition may affect different the risk of physical abuse and harsh parenting.

Religion is an important suite of beliefs and behaviours, yet the factors which cause religious beliefs and behaviours are still largely unknown. One such factor believed to shape religion is intelligence, with previous meta-analyses suggesting a negative association between measures of intelligence and religious belief (Zuckerman et al., 2020). However, the majority of this previous research has been cross-sectional and focused predominantly on American undergraduates, meaning results may be biased by confounding and/or not generalisable to the wider population. We therefore need longitudinal data from population-based studies with repeated religiosity and intelligence data to assess whether these associations may be causal in a more representative population. Enter ALSPAC.

References:
Zuckerman, M., Li, C., Lin, S. & Hall, J.A. (2020). The Negative Intelligence–Religiosity Relation: New and Confirming Evidence. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Bull., 46, 856–868.

Human facial morphology is highly individualized. It is a complex trait jointly influenced by multiple genetic and environmental factors. In this project, state-of-the-art statistical genetics methods, including those developed by our teams, will be applied to dissect the genetic factors underpinning variations in human facial morphology. Our findings will advance knowledge on genetics of the craniofacial structure and will contribute to personalized and precision treatment of craniofacial diseases to improve quality of health care.

Iodine deficiency during pregnancy can result in impaired thyroid function and lead to altered brain structure. We have shown that even mild-to-moderate ID in UK pregnant women is associated with lower child IQ and reading scores at age 8-9 years.

Recent dietary recommendations promote plant-based diets for environmental sustainability and such diets are increasingly popular, particularly among young women. Since plant foods have low iodine content and animal foods are the main contributors to iodine intake, plant-based diets may increase the risk of iodine deficiency. Such diets, with high vegetable intake, may also be high in goitrogens (foods that may reduce the absorption and use of iodine in the body). A diet high in goitrogens but low in iodine may increase the risk of ID and its effects on child neurodevelopment, but there is a lack of data in this area.

In this project we plan to investigate whether a dietary risk score that considers both iodine intake and iodine inhibitors can predict mother's iodine status and thyroid function in pregnancy, and also child cognitive outcomes (e.g. IQ).

Auditory verbal hallucinations are conceptualised as hearing voices or a sense of being communicated to without any external speaker present. Historically viewed as hallmarks of psychosis and other serious mental illnesses, we now know that nonclinical voices can occur with varying intensities and frequencies in the general population too. However, clinical voices such as those of a commanding nature often contribute to severe levels of distress and dysfunction, especially when the voices command the voice-hearer to carry out harmful actions against their will. Related phenomena, called delusions of (thought) interference, include thought insertion and delusion of control, defined as the feeling that someone external is sending or forcing thoughts into a person's mind and being under the influence of an external power, respectively. Command hallucinations, delusion of control and thought insertion breach if not erase the boundary between one's self and other, thus leading to a confusion between internal and external events which can make the commands exceedingly difficult to resist. Sometimes both the distress caused by and the coercive nature of such experiences can lead to suicidal feelings and behaviours including acts of self-harm. This project aims to investigate the relationships between such command hallucinations, inserted thoughts and suicidal behaviours by studying their trajectories, how they develop and change over time, as well as clarifying the impact of these experiences on individuals' mental wellbeing versus diagnoses of mental illness.

Background
Mastering motor milestones and social personal skills may lead to a developmental transition that initiates a cascade of developmental changes, including social interaction and language learning(1). For example, the onset of walking(1,2) and sitting skills(3) but also social-personal skills can predict children's vocabulary size, which may potentially affect literacy-related abilities in later life. Similarly, early abilities to distinguish prosody and rhythm may affect children’s progress in learning language and (social) communication. For example, musical rhythmicity is strongly linked to cognition due to the synchronization of the partner's language expression in social communication(4).
Various studies have shown the genetic overlap between interpersonal milestone development and neurodevelopmental disorders. For example, individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show delayed development of cognitive and social functioning and, therefore, may reach early developmental milestones later (smiling, walking, spoon feeding themselves, crawling) or not at all(5).

This project will use data from ALSPAC and other large cohorts to investigate the genetic architecture of early social/communicative/language abilities as well as social /social communication abilities during the life course within large consortia (e.g. meta-Genome Wide Association Analyses (GWAS) within the EAGLE consortium) including in-depth structural models of genetic factors. The study will biologically annotate the genetic architecture of early social/communicative abilities as well as social abilities through genetic enrichment and variance partitioning analyses. Once social behaviour has been modelled genetically, we will derive genetic tools to identify genetic overlap with neuro-developmental disorders and other health-related, educational and (social) behavioural outcomes in later life, as well as brain-related encodings (e.g. brain structure and function). The project will finally assess evidence for correlation and causal mechanisms linking precursors of social/communicative abilities (e.g. musicality, motor behaviour and temperament) to social performance and, in turn, social behaviour and social communication skills to later-life outcomes (e.g. health, education, behaviour).

1. Walle, E. A. Infant Social Development across the Transition from Crawling to Walking. Front. Psychol. 7, (2016).
2. Walle, E. A. & Campos, J. J. Infant language development is related to the acquisition of walking. Dev. Psychol. 50, 336–348 (2014).
3. Libertus, K. & Violi, D. A. Sit to Talk: Relation between Motor Skills and Language Development in Infancy. Front. Psychol. 7, (2016).
4. Ravignani, A., Honing, H. & Kotz, S. A. Editorial: The Evolution of Rhythm Cognition: Timing in Music and Speech. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 11, 303 (2017).
5. Kuo, S. S. et al. Developmental Variability in Autism Across 17 000 Autistic Individuals and 4000 Siblings Without an Autism Diagnosis: Comparisons by Cohort, Intellectual Disability, Genetic Etiology, and Age at Diagnosis. JAMA Pediatr. 176, 915–923 (2022).

Around 14,000 children initially participated in ALSPAC. Over time, many children have been lost to follow-up (“drop-out”) or have participated at some time-points and not at others (“sporadic non-response”). Missing data due to non-response can lead to bias when estimating associations. Multiple imputation (MI) is an analysis strategy that can correct this bias, by recovering information about the missing values using observed variables (“predictors”). However, there are methodological challenges with the correct application of MI. The aim of this project is to assess their impact in practice, and develop an automated expert system to guide researchers through the multiple decisions required when using MI.

DNA methylation, the binding of a methyl-group to the DNA structure, can affect gene transcription and is related to aging. So strongly, in fact, that DNA methylation at specific sites (i.e. ‘CpGs’) can be used to estimate a persons’ age through the use of so-called ‘epigenetic clocks’. Not only do the age estimates produced by epigenetic clocks relate highly to chronological age, but the extent to which they deviate from chronological age is an important predictor of health: in adults, epigenetic age acceleration (i.e. being epigenetically older than one’s age) relates to greater disease risk and mortality, whereas conversely, deceleration relates to better health and longevity.
Research from our group suggests that an individual’s epigenetic age acceleration might be determined early on. We brought together the world’s largest developmental datasets with repeated epigenetic assessments to map how DNA methylation patterns change over the first two decades of life. We found that sites that make up epigenetic clocks already show substantial differences between individuals in early life, sometimes even from birth. This raises the possibility that longevity differences apparent in old age may already be influenced by factors occurring at a young age, opening new opportunities for early detection and intervention.
Here, we aim to identify the early origins of epigenetic aging, by examining the contribution of genetic and environmental influences, beginning in pregnancy. To do so, we use individual-level DNA methylation patterns of change at clock CpGs, already created. In addition, we will study early outcomes of inter-individual variation in early epigenetic age acceleration at the molecular and system-level.

Around one-quarter of young people in the UK report intimate partner violence and abuse (IPVA, that is, physical or sexual violence, or emotional abuse) among their parents by age 16. Research in US student samples suggests that for these young people, they are more likely to be victimised in their own intimate relationships as adolescents and young adults, this association my vary according to the timing of exposure to parental IPVA, and may be even higher for those with other adverse childhood experiences, such as maltreatment or parental mental illness. However, this has rarely been studied in a general population sample, or in the UK. Further, little is known about the burden
of continued IPVA over the life-course on later health, that is, witnessing IPVA among parents to then experiencing IPVA in one’s own relationship. However, IPVA among parents does not guarantee future IPVA, and many go on to not to experience this in their own intimate relationships. Understanding what factors (e.g. parent-child relationships, school, peers) help to break the cycle of intimate partner violence, can inform policies and interventions to prevent further violence and improve quality of life in these families.