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MARTINOS FACULTY ALUMNI |
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Gregory P Gasic, PhD
Assistant Professor in Radiology at Harvard Medical School
Assistant Neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital
Department of Radiology, MGH
PhD, Molecular Genetics, The Rockefeller University
149 Thirteenth Street, Rm 2301
Charlestown, MA 02129
Phone: 617-726-0326
Fax: 617-726-7422
Location: 149-2
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DESCRIPTION OF WORK / BIOSKETCH
Modern neuroimaging techniques generate detailed measurements of multiple aspects of human brain structure and function, each of which has the potential to be an endophenotype and used as such in genetic association studies. The major benefits of substituting imaging endophenotypes for more traditional cognitive, behavioral or clinical phenotypes is that measures of brain structure and function are closer to the sites of gene action or more purely biological, less socially or historically conditioned, than categories of complex behavior or disorders. Genetic association studies using imaging endophenotypes have demonstrated at least on log greater power to detect specific genetic effects and, once such associations have been identified, an ultimate understanding of genetic determinants of cognition and behavior can be securely built on an intermediate level of knowledge about genetic determinants of architecture and function of human brain systems. Identifying the distributed circuits that contribute to complex cognitive and emotional behaviors and the genes responsible for establishing and maintaining these circuits is essential to our understanding of how individual differences in these circuits may confer vulnerability to psychiatric diseases such as addictions and mood disorders.
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