[Music]
good evening
so I’m a behavioral scientist and
tonight I want to tell you a story
imagine a country which is a big
producer of oil which by the way is a
limited product this country has to
provide oil for all inland consumers
which is important this determines the
welfare of the consumers and eventually
the welfare of the population imagine
now that out there there is a market
which is made by private entities which
are driven by the goal of making money
out of the oil trading our country will
have to face a big dilemma whether to
use internal local oil or whether to
assess to the international market and
try to get oil for the consumers from
external sources the solution to this
dilemma looks quite obvious indeed each
use of internal oil local oil will have
a long-term cost for the conferral
consumers instead if this country is a
implements a policy of importing oil
from external sources this will increase
on the long term this enviable
of the consumers so I mean a benefit for
the population now the example I just
made is not the introduction to a TED
talk in geopolitics it is instead the
introduction to genetics the producers
in this case are the parents and in
particular demand according to the
example I will talk about tonight the
consumers are the offspring newborns
individuals of our species which I will
define
altricial which means that their
survival depends very much on the
caregiver at least for some period of
time after birth until winning a decent
brief is also the an introduction to a
framework of an evolutionary theory
proposed by David Icke an evolutionary
biologist at Harvard who states that mum
is very much focused in maximizing the
survival of all offspring and therefore
what she will try to do
is to budget as much as possible or all
air resources and so that she can invest
more in all offspring and in doing that
she will use different strategies one of
this strategy might be the anticipation
of winning so that she can save some
resources and get dad more involved in
the care of the offspring from a recent
lecture title a tale of two mothers we
can make few considerations few
observations but just looking at the
reproductive strategies of female
chimpanzees versus women of our species
indeed if you look at this graph female
chimpanzees give a birth quite early in
life at the age of 12 15 they can’t
reproduce until the end of their life
with almost no post reproductive period
if you think about basically species
occupy most of the life time for
reproduction
moreover chimpanzee win quite late in
life they win at the age of five or
Angleton even later at the age of seven
eight and the female chimpanzee won’t
become pregnant again until the previous
offspring is not fully independent
instead if you look at how our species
we can see that women give birth quite
late in life an average of age of twenty
but even a later this change across
different cultures and we have a very
long post reproductive period humans can
win quite early instead and we win at
the age of two three so that basically
we have a multiple births quite close
each other and this is a good strategy
in order to use only a small segment of
our lifetime dedicated to reproduction
so what is all this telling us well
first of all tells us that we are a
species compared to other great apes
that is capable of winning immature
offspring individuals that not fully
developed yet and if you think about
this is mirrors exactly the way our
societies organized
indeed women can delegate the care of
the offspring to fathers to grandparents
to nurseries quite often to a
combination of all these and these are
some advantages for example as I said
before we can use only a small segment
of our life for the production but this
allowed also to carry multiple offspring
at the same time however this has some
disadvantage for potentially
disadvantages for the offspring indeed
this increases the level of the risk for
dr. King and what I will harbour in a
moment that when this is match with
particularly genetic factor might have
negative consequences in life but better
back to biology which are these genetic
factors where there are specific genes
which regulate all these mechanisms and
what I would like to do tonight is to
talk about a particular class of genes
called imprinted genes what is the
genomic imprinting genomic imprinting is
an epigenetic phenomenon which regards
only a small set of genes and in this
particular case it sets on and off only
one copy of a gene either if this copy
is inherited from the maternal line or
if the copy is inherited from the
paternal line and in some case the
maternal copy is a silence so that gene
is paternal expressed in other case is
the paternal copy that is silenced that
gene is maternal express so these genes
are expressed differentially expressed
in different part of our organism for
example they are highly expressing the
placenta and interesting enough for us
that we study behavior they are highly
expressed in the brain but why are so
important well we know that imprinted
genes are extremely important during
development they regulate for example
growth neural development but they’re
also important for the setting of many
behavioral aspects early in life and
also for many metabolic expect for
example imprinted genes are in poor
and in regulating the capability of the
offspring to take resources from the
mother and also to they participate in
the regulation of the interpreter well
so the interval between distant birth is
extremely important indeed if you are an
offspring this tells you how long your
mom would be able to invest in you
before you will be sharing resources
with the next offspring and trust me on
this data was last in line my family so
I know this very well but besides all
these aspects we know that the genomic
imprinting plays an important role we
just discovered recently in one of the
most mysterious aspect of our life which
is still not fully understood this is
asleep in my lab we discover that a few
imprinted genes regulate one specific
form of sleep which is called
REM sleep so what is REM sleep REM is a
physiologically active form of sleep in
which our eyes move very fast and in
which we experience dreaming but it
turns out that the RAM is also very
important during development and in
particularly if you look at the
developmental phase we see that the
predominant state in this place is sleep
more than 95% of the time of a fetus to
spend a sleep and also after birth
newborns spend most of their time in
sleep and all this sleep is made by REM
sleep which is also important for
reproductive success later in life
indeed if we block REM sleep during
development we might lead to sexual
dysfunction and to brain dysfunction all
sort of conditions which reduces the
reproductive opportunity for the
individual but we know that REM is also
extremely important for the
establishment of many behavioral aspects
during early life and what I will argue
tonight that is important for attachment
my friend Patrick McNamara professor at
Boston University back in 2004 predicted
that genomic imprinting was important
for sleep and also that sleep is
important in setting the bonding between
the newborns and the mother he suggested
the REM sleep could be profound
in reinforcing the attachment with the
caregiver and there are quite few
research evidence showing this and going
this direction for example we know that
RAM increases when newborns
cause sleep with the mothers conversely
Ram decreases during maternal separation
and there are several mechanism along
with the sleep and with lactation which
dictate the time for the next birth of
the offspring also we know that the REM
sleep changed across different species
and he seems to be strongly correlated
with the alt reality of a species so the
greater is the maturity of a species the
longer the time they spent asleep
for example ferrets which are born in a
quiet immature state days have almost 30
percent of their sleep in RAM while more
precocial species like or PSA’s they
spend only 20% of the sleep time in RAM
and humans were just ended in between
both in terms of a few allottee and
expression of REM sleep so but what’s
going on in the brain during REM sleep
well a number of things going on in the
brain and outside brain when we enter
REM sleep during this physiological
state we we lose for example the control
of our body temperature so it’s a sort
of going back in evolution down to the
reptile lineage if you wish but there
also many brain areas which are
activated during REM sleep and one of
these is the MiG da amygdala is an
extremely important structure for our
brain it provides us the capability to
process emotions and when you are child
this is extremely important it provides
you the right infrastructure to
understand if the environment around you
is safe or not weather is chaotic or is
predictable it has been shown that if
the local environment during the first
year of life is not stable and
predictable this may have dramatic
consequences for the developmental
trajectories of the
individuals so affecting the rest of our
life so all this brings us to the next
topic which motivated part of our
research over the last few years and
particularly what we wonder was what’s
going on when we change genetic
background and we discover that a
combination a particular combination of
maternal and paternal genes affects the
expression of REM sleep but also the
interaction between the newborns and the
mother and what I will hug you here that
influenced the development of particular
attachment style what we did in this
experiment is to subject newborn mice to
an unfamiliar female and later to the
man and we study how they react when in
the explore the in unfamiliar
environment and then during the reunion
and what we understood is that a
particular set of maternal and paternal
genes influence this behavior in
particular responsible of which
developmental which attachment style the
mouse will develop whether will have a
secure attachment or an insecure
attachment and most important this
influence also the behavior as adult
indeed those mice which develop an
insecure attachment later in life will
interact less and less with other
conspecific so showing a sort of a
social impairment so all I told you
today brings us to some important
consideration first of all that humans
are not fully dedicated to the
production we are not mandatorily
committed to just pass our genes on to
the next generation we surely respond to
this evolutionary need but we have
organized also our life with plenty of
time to develop other activities and not
all these activities are engaged in
specific revolutionary programs compared
to our other primates we extended our
apostle productive period but we also
extended our juvenile period and in
particular during this extended juvenile
period
we invest lots of resources in preparing
ourself for adult life this is called
education which occurs generally in
families but also mostly in a social
context and we also create a specialized
organization for that which are called
school another important consideration
we can take from here that we are a
species that is capable of sharing the
responsibility of the safety of our
children within the social context and
hold these aspects are extremely
important and this should improve the
quality of our life
so the next question is is this what
really happening unfortunately things
don’t go always in this direction for
example psychological suffering
represents a tremendous burden for our
society it has been estimated that 350
million individuals suffer from
depression around the world and
depression is some case may lead to
suicide has been estimated at 800,000
individuals every year commit suicide an
average of one individual every 40
seconds in psychological suffering is
caused not only by depression but also
for example by personality disorders 10%
of u.s. population suffers personality
disorders and those are disorders we
affect which affect not only the
individual but also families the partner
the social context aim of the working
environment so if you wish is a sort of
epidemic effort across the society in a
recent study has been estimated that 20%
of individuals who ever high-risk
infancy can account as adult for 80% of
the economic burden for our society in
conclusion what I told you today has a
biological factor to the link between
our physiology and behavior early in
life and our adult life the idea I want
to pass to you is that we are suited to
get the best hour our life we can
develop a proper physiology and behavior
that maximize our interest across life
but what I also told you that in the
equation between an early life and adult
life there is a new entry
but we should take seriously in
consideration and this is sleep and
particularly talking about REM sleep
what I also told you that there are
specific genes that regulate all this
mechanism and in particular I mention
the imprinted genes the problem raised
when we increase the risk for our
individuals and high risk conditions
usually occurs when the individual is
vulnerable for example soon after birth
when our physiology and our behavior are
not fully developed at that stage we are
particularly vulnerable so if something
goes wrong at that stage the
consequences are dramatic for the
individual but also for the rest of
society society however the good news is
that will make great progress in
understanding these risk factors we do
constantly research in trying to
understand how genetics and external
factors influence our biology but also
mental health so our ultimate goal as a
scientist will be to provide a complete
understanding of the genetics of our
physiology and behavior and hopefully
this will reduce dramatically the global
psychological suffering of the
population but also will reduce the
burden for our economy thank
[Applause]
good evening
so I’m a behavioral scientist and
tonight I want to tell you a story
imagine a country which is a big
producer of oil which by the way is a
limited product this country has to
provide oil for all inland consumers
which is important this determines the
welfare of the consumers and eventually
the welfare of the population imagine
now that out there there is a market
which is made by private entities which
are driven by the goal of making money
out of the oil trading our country will
have to face a big dilemma whether to
use internal local oil or whether to
assess to the international market and
try to get oil for the consumers from
external sources the solution to this
dilemma looks quite obvious indeed each
use of internal oil local oil will have
a long-term cost for the conferral
consumers instead if this country is a
implements a policy of importing oil
from external sources this will increase
on the long term this enviable
of the consumers so I mean a benefit for
the population now the example I just
made is not the introduction to a TED
talk in geopolitics it is instead the
introduction to genetics the producers
in this case are the parents and in
particular demand according to the
example I will talk about tonight the
consumers are the offspring newborns
individuals of our species which I will
define
altricial which means that their
survival depends very much on the
caregiver at least for some period of
time after birth until winning a decent
brief is also the an introduction to a
framework of an evolutionary theory
proposed by David Icke an evolutionary
biologist at Harvard who states that mum
is very much focused in maximizing the
survival of all offspring and therefore
what she will try to do
is to budget as much as possible or all
air resources and so that she can invest
more in all offspring and in doing that
she will use different strategies one of
this strategy might be the anticipation
of winning so that she can save some
resources and get dad more involved in
the care of the offspring from a recent
lecture title a tale of two mothers we
can make few considerations few
observations but just looking at the
reproductive strategies of female
chimpanzees versus women of our species
indeed if you look at this graph female
chimpanzees give a birth quite early in
life at the age of 12 15 they can’t
reproduce until the end of their life
with almost no post reproductive period
if you think about basically species
occupy most of the life time for
reproduction
moreover chimpanzee win quite late in
life they win at the age of five or
Angleton even later at the age of seven
eight and the female chimpanzee won’t
become pregnant again until the previous
offspring is not fully independent
instead if you look at how our species
we can see that women give birth quite
late in life an average of age of twenty
but even a later this change across
different cultures and we have a very
long post reproductive period humans can
win quite early instead and we win at
the age of two three so that basically
we have a multiple births quite close
each other and this is a good strategy
in order to use only a small segment of
our lifetime dedicated to reproduction
so what is all this telling us well
first of all tells us that we are a
species compared to other great apes
that is capable of winning immature
offspring individuals that not fully
developed yet and if you think about
this is mirrors exactly the way our
societies organized
indeed women can delegate the care of
the offspring to fathers to grandparents
to nurseries quite often to a
combination of all these and these are
some advantages for example as I said
before we can use only a small segment
of our life for the production but this
allowed also to carry multiple offspring
at the same time however this has some
disadvantage for potentially
disadvantages for the offspring indeed
this increases the level of the risk for
dr. King and what I will harbour in a
moment that when this is match with
particularly genetic factor might have
negative consequences in life but better
back to biology which are these genetic
factors where there are specific genes
which regulate all these mechanisms and
what I would like to do tonight is to
talk about a particular class of genes
called imprinted genes what is the
genomic imprinting genomic imprinting is
an epigenetic phenomenon which regards
only a small set of genes and in this
particular case it sets on and off only
one copy of a gene either if this copy
is inherited from the maternal line or
if the copy is inherited from the
paternal line and in some case the
maternal copy is a silence so that gene
is paternal expressed in other case is
the paternal copy that is silenced that
gene is maternal express so these genes
are expressed differentially expressed
in different part of our organism for
example they are highly expressing the
placenta and interesting enough for us
that we study behavior they are highly
expressed in the brain but why are so
important well we know that imprinted
genes are extremely important during
development they regulate for example
growth neural development but they’re
also important for the setting of many
behavioral aspects early in life and
also for many metabolic expect for
example imprinted genes are in poor
and in regulating the capability of the
offspring to take resources from the
mother and also to they participate in
the regulation of the interpreter well
so the interval between distant birth is
extremely important indeed if you are an
offspring this tells you how long your
mom would be able to invest in you
before you will be sharing resources
with the next offspring and trust me on
this data was last in line my family so
I know this very well but besides all
these aspects we know that the genomic
imprinting plays an important role we
just discovered recently in one of the
most mysterious aspect of our life which
is still not fully understood this is
asleep in my lab we discover that a few
imprinted genes regulate one specific
form of sleep which is called
REM sleep so what is REM sleep REM is a
physiologically active form of sleep in
which our eyes move very fast and in
which we experience dreaming but it
turns out that the RAM is also very
important during development and in
particularly if you look at the
developmental phase we see that the
predominant state in this place is sleep
more than 95% of the time of a fetus to
spend a sleep and also after birth
newborns spend most of their time in
sleep and all this sleep is made by REM
sleep which is also important for
reproductive success later in life
indeed if we block REM sleep during
development we might lead to sexual
dysfunction and to brain dysfunction all
sort of conditions which reduces the
reproductive opportunity for the
individual but we know that REM is also
extremely important for the
establishment of many behavioral aspects
during early life and what I will argue
tonight that is important for attachment
my friend Patrick McNamara professor at
Boston University back in 2004 predicted
that genomic imprinting was important
for sleep and also that sleep is
important in setting the bonding between
the newborns and the mother he suggested
the REM sleep could be profound
in reinforcing the attachment with the
caregiver and there are quite few
research evidence showing this and going
this direction for example we know that
RAM increases when newborns
cause sleep with the mothers conversely
Ram decreases during maternal separation
and there are several mechanism along
with the sleep and with lactation which
dictate the time for the next birth of
the offspring also we know that the REM
sleep changed across different species
and he seems to be strongly correlated
with the alt reality of a species so the
greater is the maturity of a species the
longer the time they spent asleep
for example ferrets which are born in a
quiet immature state days have almost 30
percent of their sleep in RAM while more
precocial species like or PSA’s they
spend only 20% of the sleep time in RAM
and humans were just ended in between
both in terms of a few allottee and
expression of REM sleep so but what’s
going on in the brain during REM sleep
well a number of things going on in the
brain and outside brain when we enter
REM sleep during this physiological
state we we lose for example the control
of our body temperature so it’s a sort
of going back in evolution down to the
reptile lineage if you wish but there
also many brain areas which are
activated during REM sleep and one of
these is the MiG da amygdala is an
extremely important structure for our
brain it provides us the capability to
process emotions and when you are child
this is extremely important it provides
you the right infrastructure to
understand if the environment around you
is safe or not weather is chaotic or is
predictable it has been shown that if
the local environment during the first
year of life is not stable and
predictable this may have dramatic
consequences for the developmental
trajectories of the
individuals so affecting the rest of our
life so all this brings us to the next
topic which motivated part of our
research over the last few years and
particularly what we wonder was what’s
going on when we change genetic
background and we discover that a
combination a particular combination of
maternal and paternal genes affects the
expression of REM sleep but also the
interaction between the newborns and the
mother and what I will hug you here that
influenced the development of particular
attachment style what we did in this
experiment is to subject newborn mice to
an unfamiliar female and later to the
man and we study how they react when in
the explore the in unfamiliar
environment and then during the reunion
and what we understood is that a
particular set of maternal and paternal
genes influence this behavior in
particular responsible of which
developmental which attachment style the
mouse will develop whether will have a
secure attachment or an insecure
attachment and most important this
influence also the behavior as adult
indeed those mice which develop an
insecure attachment later in life will
interact less and less with other
conspecific so showing a sort of a
social impairment so all I told you
today brings us to some important
consideration first of all that humans
are not fully dedicated to the
production we are not mandatorily
committed to just pass our genes on to
the next generation we surely respond to
this evolutionary need but we have
organized also our life with plenty of
time to develop other activities and not
all these activities are engaged in
specific revolutionary programs compared
to our other primates we extended our
apostle productive period but we also
extended our juvenile period and in
particular during this extended juvenile
period
we invest lots of resources in preparing
ourself for adult life this is called
education which occurs generally in
families but also mostly in a social
context and we also create a specialized
organization for that which are called
school another important consideration
we can take from here that we are a
species that is capable of sharing the
responsibility of the safety of our
children within the social context and
hold these aspects are extremely
important and this should improve the
quality of our life
so the next question is is this what
really happening unfortunately things
don’t go always in this direction for
example psychological suffering
represents a tremendous burden for our
society it has been estimated that 350
million individuals suffer from
depression around the world and
depression is some case may lead to
suicide has been estimated at 800,000
individuals every year commit suicide an
average of one individual every 40
seconds in psychological suffering is
caused not only by depression but also
for example by personality disorders 10%
of u.s. population suffers personality
disorders and those are disorders we
affect which affect not only the
individual but also families the partner
the social context aim of the working
environment so if you wish is a sort of
epidemic effort across the society in a
recent study has been estimated that 20%
of individuals who ever high-risk
infancy can account as adult for 80% of
the economic burden for our society in
conclusion what I told you today has a
biological factor to the link between
our physiology and behavior early in
life and our adult life the idea I want
to pass to you is that we are suited to
get the best hour our life we can
develop a proper physiology and behavior
that maximize our interest across life
but what I also told you that in the
equation between an early life and adult
life there is a new entry
but we should take seriously in
consideration and this is sleep and
particularly talking about REM sleep
what I also told you that there are
specific genes that regulate all this
mechanism and in particular I mention
the imprinted genes the problem raised
when we increase the risk for our
individuals and high risk conditions
usually occurs when the individual is
vulnerable for example soon after birth
when our physiology and our behavior are
not fully developed at that stage we are
particularly vulnerable so if something
goes wrong at that stage the
consequences are dramatic for the
individual but also for the rest of
society society however the good news is
that will make great progress in
understanding these risk factors we do
constantly research in trying to
understand how genetics and external
factors influence our biology but also
mental health so our ultimate goal as a
scientist will be to provide a complete
understanding of the genetics of our
physiology and behavior and hopefully
this will reduce dramatically the global
psychological suffering of the
population but also will reduce the
burden for our economy thank
[Applause]
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