Development and the epigenome: the ‘synapse’ of gene–environment interplay

This paper argues that there is a revolution afoot in the developmental science of gene–environment interplay. We summarize, for an audience of developmental researchers and clinicians, how epigenetic processes – chromatin structural modifications that regulate gene expression without changing DNA sequences – may offer a strong, parsimonious account for the convergence of genetic and contextual variation in the genesis of adaptive and maladaptive development. Epigenetic processes may play a plausible explanatory role in understanding: divergent trajectories and sexual dimorphisms in brain development; statistical interactions between genes and environments; the biological embedding of early psychosocial adversities; the linkages of such adversities to disorders of mental health; the striking individual variation in the strength of those linkages; the molecular origins of critical and sensitive periods; and the transgenerational inheritance of risk and protection. Taken together, these arguments converge in a claim that epigenetic processes constitute a promising and illuminating point of connection – a ‘synapse’ – between genes and environments.     

Conceptualising mental health in the United Arab Emirates: the perspective of traditional healers

Substantial investments in health-care have ensured the widespread availability of allopathic medical services across the United Arab Emirates (UAE). However, in spite of this accessibility traditional healers (Mutawa) continue to play a significant, albeit, unofficial role in the UAE's health sector. Citizens routinely consult traditional healers for problems that might, from a western biomedical perspective, be considered psychiatric conditions. This qualitative study explores traditional healers' conceptualisations of mental health problems, discussing their perspectives on phenomenology, aetiology, intervention and outcome. Notably, traditional healers distinguished between biomedical illness and states they attributed to demonological or metaphysical causes. The Islamic spiritual narrative was central to discussions of aetiology, intervention and outcome. Greater integration of traditional healers within the UAE's mental health-care services would, in many cases, improve patient experience and outcomes.     

Observed actions affect body-specific associations between space and valence

Right-handers tend to associate “good” with the right side of space and “bad” with the left. This implicit association appears to arise from the way people perform actions, more or less fluently, with their right and left hands. Here we tested whether observing manual actions performed with greater or lesser fluency can affect observers' space–valence associations. In two experiments, we assigned one participant (the actor) to perform a bimanual fine motor task while another participant (the observer) watched. Actors were assigned to wear a ski glove on either the right or left hand, which made performing the actions on this side of space disfluent. In Experiment 1, observers stood behind the actors, sharing their spatial perspective. After motor training, both actors and observers tended to associate “good” with the side of the actors' free hand and “bad” with the side of the gloved hand. To determine whether observers' space–valence associations were computed from their own perspectives or the actors', in Experiment 2 we asked the observer to stand face-to-face with the actor, reversing their spatial perspectives. After motor training, both actors and observers associated “good” with the side of space where disfluent actions had occurred from their own egocentric spatial perspectives; if “good” was associated with the actor's right-hand side it was likely to be associated with the observer's left-hand side. Results show that vicarious experiences of motor fluency can shape valence judgments, and that observers spontaneously encode the locations of fluent and disfluent actions in egocentric spatial coordinates.