Ivan Chavarria Siles
| Address: | VU - Center for Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research |
|---|---|
| Telephone: | +31 20 598 2834 |
| Fax: | +31 20 598 6926 |
| E-mail: | ivan.chavarria@vu.nl |
| Position: | PhD student |
Short CV
1/2010- current. PhD Candidate
Center of Neurogenomics and Cognitive Research Amsterdam,
Functional Genomics Department. VU University Amsterdam.
& Donders Institute, Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging. Nijmegen.
9/2005- 12/2009. Fellowship in Psychiatric Genetics
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio,
Department of Psychiatry. San Antonio, Texas, USA.
10/2003- 6/2005. Research Intership (for MSc in Biochemistry)
Alcorcon Hospital, Neuroscience Department
Madrid, Spain
1/2001- 1/2003. Medical Internship (for MD)
Costa Rican National Hospitals System (CCSS)
San Jose, Costa Rica
Publications
Iván Chavarría-Siles, Mark Rijpkema, Esther Lips, Alejandro Arias-Vasquez, Matthijs Verhage, Barbara Franke, Guillén Fernández, Danielle Posthuma.G-proteins genes are associated with grey matter volume variations in the Medial Frontal Cortex. Journal of Neuroscience. In revision, 2012.
Walss-Bass C, Soto-Bernardini MC, Johnson-Pais T, Leach RJ, Ontiveros A, Nicolini H, Mendoza R, Jerez A, Dassori A, Chavarría-Siles I, Escamilla MA, Raventos H. Methionine sulfoxide reductase: A novel schizophrenia candidate gene. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. 2008. 150B(2): 219-225. 2009
Chavarría-Siles I, Contreras-Rojas J, Hare E, Walss-Bass C, Quezada P, Dassori A, Contreras S, Medina R, Ramárez M, Salazar R, Raventos H, Escamilla MA. Cannabinoid receptor 1 gene (CNR1) and susceptibility to a quantitative phenotype for hebephrenic schizophrenia. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. 147B(3): 279-284. 2008.
Chavarría-Siles I, Consuelo Walss-Bass, Paulina Quezada, Albana Dassori, Salvador Contreras, Rolando Medina, Mercedes Ramárez, Regina Armas, Rodolfo Salazar, Robin J. Leach, Henriette Raventos, Michael A. Escamilla. TGFB-induced factor (TGIF): a Candidate gene for psychosis on chromosome 18p. Molecular Psychiatry. 12(11):1033-41. 2007.
Cristina Benito, Wong-Ki Kim, Iván Chavarría Siles, Ceceila J. Hillard, Ken Mackie, Rosa M. Tolán, Ken Williams, and Julián Romero. A glial endogenous cannabinoid system is up-regulated in the brains of macaques with simian immunodeficiency virus-induced encephalitis. Journal of Neuroscience. 25(10): 2530-2536. 2005.
PhD project: Imaging genetics of cognition
Identifying neurobiological pathways for variation in the range of normal cognitive ability could provide important clues to underlying mechanisms of milder but more-prevalent forms of impaired cognitive functioning, as associated with autism, schizophrenia, reading disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
To date, little is known about the underlying neurobiological pathways of individual differences in human cognitive ability. Although the past decade has suggested several links between genetic polymorphisms and complex cognitive behaviors, for most of these links we currently lack information about the intermediate route, i.e. how the gene affects brain expression levels and how it is related to brain structure and functioning.
A further crucial step to our understanding of how the brain works lies in linking functional variations in genetic make-up to human brain functioning. The main aim of this project is to understand how genetic variation affects brain functioning related to cognition using an imaging genetics approach.