What is EPIGENETICS in psychology?

The concept of epigenetic psychology has recently been introduced: it is the study of the influences that aspects psychological, in its cognitive, emotional and motivational components, act on the selective expression of information genetics. Epigenetic psychology is distinguished from other scientific areas, such as behavioral genetics or neuroscience, by the fact that precisely investigates the relationships between the purely psychological dimensions (cognitive, emotional and motivational) and the epigenetic processes of biology molecular.

Through this Psychology-Online article we will discover together and more precisely what is epigenetics in psychology, its definition, the particular behavioral epigenetics and some examples of epigenetics.

Index

1. Definition of epigenetics according to authors
2. Psychology and epigenetics
3. Behavioral epigenetics
4. Examples of epigenetics

Epigenetics studies cellular changes without genetic mutations, which can be reversible or irreversible, hereditary or non-hereditary. A specialization that dates back to the middle of the last century, but only in the last two decades has explained a quantity of data and knowledge that provides a foundation coherent molecular approach to overcome the reductionist medical model, thus opening the possibility of a systemic approach that sees the individual and their state of health or disease under the

With British biologist Conrad H. Waddington, in 1942, there is the first definition of epigenetics, although closely related to the field of embryology: a discipline aimed at understanding the mechanisms that guide embryonic development, from genotype to phenotype.

In 1958, David L. Nanney published an article that explicitly took up Waddington's research, however advancing some ideas fundamentals on epigenetic control systems at the cellular level, a dimension taken up a few years later by the Italian Salvatore Luria, which in 1960 gave the first definition of epigenetics in the key of cell biology, thus opening the way to thirty years of research that will make epigenetics the new science of genetics.

Until a few years ago, epigenetics was defined as the study of heritable changes in gene expression that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence. Today we can say, with more precision, that epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression that are not caused by genetic mutations and that can be inherited; more generally, it indicates a certain disposition of gene expression that conditions all the activities of the cell in response to environmental stimuli. In other words, it is an adaptive change.

Epigenetic mechanisms are involved:

• in genome imprinting (partially reversible);
• in the development of the embryo, indicating the fate of the different cells that will form the different tissues and organs;
• in the life of the developed organism, stably marking processes of adaptation or maladjustment to environmental stimuli.

The epigenome has been announced as a "missing piece", the key to the etiological puzzle to understand how the development of psychological disorders can be affected by the environment - according to the genome -, and epigenetics in psychology provides a framework for understanding how gene expression looks affected by experience and environment, to produce individual differences in behavior, cognition, personality, and health mental.

The challenge for psychology has been to integrate the results of genetics and environmental factors (social, biological, chemical), including the quality of child-mother attachments, in the study of personality and in our understanding of the emergence of the disease mental. Indeed, environmental factors during early childhood and adolescence can cause changes in gene expression that confer risk of mental health and chronic physical conditions. Therefore, the examination of genetic-epigenetic-environment interactions from a perspective evolutionary can determine the nature of misregulation in genetic disorders psychological.

In fact, the combination of studies on maps of genetic association with those on development at the level of the epigenome can help identify new molecular mechanisms that explain the inheritance characteristics of the personality traits and transform our understanding of the biological foundations of psychology.

Barry M. Lester presented the 2010 conference theme on behavioral epigenetics describing research on the evolutionary origins of adult disease: behavioral epigenetics has been described as the application of the principles of epigenetics to the study of physiological, genetic, environmental and developmental mechanisms of behavior in human and non-human animals.

Investigations of behavioral epigenetics typically focus on the level of changes chemicals, gene expression and biological processes that are the basis of normal behavior and abnormal; This includes how behavior influences and is affected by epigenetic processes. Behavioral epigenetics has an interdisciplinary approach, it is based on the sciences, such as neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry, genetics, biochemistry and psychopharmacology.

Considering that there are thousands of epigenetics studies that have been carried out in the last forty years, the application of epigenetics to the study of behavior is only just beginning.

Research by Elissa Epel and her colleague Elisabeth Blackburn, since 2004, has revealed that, for example, the personal way of managing stress and living with chronic stress or not, causes a specific way of accelerating or slowing down cellular aging, altering potential longevity, that is, the residual useful life. It has thus been stated that, other things being equal, people with chronic stress have a life expectancy of at least 13 years shorter than those without chronic stress.

In several subsequent studies, also carried out by the two, it has also been shown that people who practiced techniques specific stress management strategies - taught during the experiment - were characterized by having a cellular aging process slower.

The new paradigm of epigenetics unequivocally establishes that factors such as, for example, the optimism, the effectiveness in stress management psychosocial, the frequency of rumors, depression, the practice of meditation influence chromosomal structures that determine our cellular longevity through a specific molecular mechanism: telomerase. Do you want to start meditating? In this article we show the steps to learn to meditate at home.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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• Agnoletti, M. (2018). L’asse psiche-telomeri. Ecco eats the influenza l’invecchiamento mind. PNEINEWS, 5:4-7.
• Amato, C. (2019). Cammino-therapy: alla ricerca dell’Armonia della persona. Milan: Edizioni FS.
• Bottaccioli, F. (2014). Epigenetics and psychoneuroendocrine immunology. Milan: EDRA.
• Cummings, J. A., Sanders, L. (2014). Introduction to Psychology. Recovered from: https://openpress.usask.ca/introductiontopsychology/
• Giovannelli, A. (2015). L’epigenetica e la teoria delle origini embriofetali delle malattie dell’adult (DOHaD). Recovered from: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/79619929.pdf
• Lester, B. M., Tronick, E., Nestler, E., Abel, T., Kosofsky, B., Kuzgwg, C. W., Marsit, C. J., Maze, I., Meaney, M. J., Monteggia, L. M., Reul, J. H. M., Skuse, D. H., Sweatt, J. D., Wood, M. TO. (2011). Behavioral epigenetic. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1226(1):14-33.