Simon Fisher

Remember when you first learned about genetics at school? All those fascinating examples of human traits that are each determined by just a single gene? Time to check in on some of your favourites to see how they’re doing...1/n

Bluesky is a nice breath of fresh air. bsky.app/profile/profsi…

No more tweets from me for the time being. I'm posting about genes, brains, speech & language on Mastodon instead. See you there! @ProfSimonFisher@universeodon.com

An exclusive glimpse behind the scenes at MetaAI. #AI #MachineLearning #LLM #language

@AdamRutherford I guess the one consolation is that we are guaranteed reliable accurate coverage of molecular biology topics under his watch.🙄

I'm not sure I can stick around here much longer, when the owner is so clearly intellectually shallow, ignorant of history and enamoured of fascism.

@AdamRutherford Give Mastodon a try....

@drElsje @ERC_Research @ERCGrantees @VUamsterdam @VU_FGB @NTRscience @PromentaC @UniOslo_UV @ProwiseGlobal @Prowise_NL Brilliant news Elsje, delighted to see your important research getting funded, & looking forward to the findings. Many congrats! 🎉

🤩🍾I'm over the moon about my ERC #ERCStG for my proposal "Growing up among bright books & generous genes: The intergenerational cycle of educational achievement"! It took resilience & recycling rejected grants. At 4pm I'll talk at twitter.com/ERC_Research/s… vu.nl/en/news/2022/e…

In-depth study of 17 families with loss-of-function or missense variants in the FOXP2 gene confirms links to speech/language impairments, & also suggests elevated risk of anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance. Led by @Lottiedmorison, out now in @JMG_BMJ: jmg.bmj.com/content/early/…

@samuelmehr It me. 😬

If you're curious about how we originally discovered this gene, here's an explainer thread that I posted on the 20-year anniversary of our first FOXP2 publication: twitter.com/ProfSimonFishe…

Our International Max Planck Research School is offering two PhD fellowships, funded by @maxplanckpress, for innovative research in the language sciences. Includes the theme “Genetic pathways in (a)typical speech/language development”! Apply by 2 Jan '23: mpi.nl/imprs-phd-fell…

@GaryMarcus The idea that innateness & learning are competing accounts in a zero-sum game is reminiscent of the false dichotomy of "nature versus nurture", another popular myth which we can't seem to shake off. twitter.com/ProfSimonFishe…

5 myths about innateness and learning garymarcus.substack.com/p/5-myths-abou…

@michelnivard Thanks! The genetic correlations were largely run together a couple of years ago with the data available in LDHub at the time. (As often the case, long journey from analysis to publication!) Follow-up work is underway by @drmluciano & co including updated rg with newest sumstats.

Out now in @NatureGenet, our study of DNA from 51,800 adults answering "yes" to question "have you been diagnosed with dyslexia?" compared to >1 million who responded "no", led by team of @drmluciano @EdinburghUni. We found 42 associated genetic loci. nature.com/articles/s4158… 1/n

Host of genes and genetic variants linked to dyslexia identified. theguardian.com/society/2022/o…

An international team of scientists, including researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics has for the first time pinpointed a large number of genes that are reliably associated with dyslexia. mpi.nl/news/gene-stud… @ProfSimonFisher @23andMeResearch @drmluciano

For more explanations about what molecular genetic research can & cannot tell us about dyslexia, please have a look at this FAQ website that we made to accompany the study: genlang.org/GWAS_dyslexia_… 13/13

Polygenic index from this work is too inaccurate for individual prediction & captured genetic effects might make different contributions in different learning environments. But scientists can use findings to test ideas about how nature & nurture interact as we learn to read. 12/n