Salimetrics says: " We want to encourage collaborative research and have made it possible for you to communicate directly with our featured expert, Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, School of Criminology Université de Montréal, Canada."
Dr Isabelle Ouellet-Morin
After obtaining her doctoral degree in clinical psychology (Laval University, Canada) and completing a one-year certificate in criminology (University of Montréal, Canada), Dr Ouellet-Morin undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at the MRC Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre affiliated to the Institute of Psychiatry (King’s College London, UK) to study the physiological response to stress in the context of childhood victimization.
She is now an assistant professor at the School of criminology, University of Montréal, and is affiliated with the Mental Health Institute of Montréal Research Center as well as the Research Group on Child Maladjustment where she investigates physiological (e.g., HPA axis) and psychological (e.g., coping strategies, cognitive regulation) mechanisms underlying vulnerability and resilience in youth with a history of victimization during their transition to adulthood. In her research, Dr Ouellet-Morin examines reactivity to stress as a potential marker of vulnerability for mental health problems, antisocial behaviour, aggression and enduring involvement in crime after a period of incarceration.
Interview with Isabelle......
1. Can you tell us about the major themes in your research program?
Response: My research activities aim to examine the impact of early-life victimization (e.g., maltreatment by an adult and bullying) on mental health and behavioral difficulties (e.g., aggression and delinquency) in adolescents and young adults. My objective is to go beyond the sole description of these well-known associations and identify the epigenetic, hormonal and psychological processes underlying these early roots to health inequalities.
2. If you had to pick 1 publication in the past 5 years as the "best of your best", what would it be and why?
Response: During my postdoctoral fellowship at the MRC Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre (King’s College London, UK), I published findings showing that bullying victimization was associated with lower cortisol reactivity to stress. The data were collected in a subsample of the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally representative cohort of families with twins in England and Wales. Because of the discordant monozygotic twin design, we minimized the possibility that this atypical pattern of secretion can be explained by genetic or common familial influences. We later reported similar findings in a larger sample of twin victims of bullying and/or maltreatment and showed that this pattern of neuroendocrine secretion was associated with higher social problems and externalizing behaviours.
Ouellet-Morin I, Danese A, Bowes L, Shakoor S, Ambler A, Pariante C, Papadopoulos A, Caspi A, Moffitt TE & Arseneault L (2011). A Discordant MZ Twin Design Shows Blunted Cortisol Reactivity among Bullied Children. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 50: 574-582.
Ouellet-Morin I, Odgers C, Danese A, Bowes L, Shakoor S, Papadopoulos A, Caspi A, Moffitt TE & Arseneault L (2011). Blunted Cortisol Responses to Stress Signal Social and Behavioral Problems among Maltreated/Bullied 12 Year-Old Children. Biological Psychiatry, 70: 1016–1023.
3. Which salivary analytes are you working with?
Response: I have primarily been interested in the stress hormone cortisol but have also conducted, in collaboration with researchers affiliated with King’s College London and Duke University, preliminary work aiming to validate the measurement of C-Reactive protein in the saliva. I am now extending my interests to DNA methylation collected in saliva as an additional mechanism by which early victimization gets under the “skull, skin and cells” to affect long-term vulnerabilities of mental health and behavioral difficulties such as aggression and delinquency.
4. How has working with saliva changed the direction of your research plans?
Response: At the beginning of my graduate studies, I was interested in the etiology of human aggression in children who experienced adversity early in their lives. In the pursuit of this endeavour, I had the opportunity to take a more mechanistic approach and work with data collected in the Québec new-born twin study, which follows the development of young twins in Canada, to explore if the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and its final product, cortisol, could explain the impact of early adversity on behavioral difficulties. This was undoubtedly a defining moment in my career as it ignited the thrill of describing phenomena observed in animal research that was then, and remains, rarely investigated in a genetically-informed context in humans, especially at such a young age. Specifically, we showed that cortisol response to novelty was strongly influenced by the environment in twins exposed to familial adversity (e.g., economical deprivation) in contrast to a greater contribution of inherited factors in twins growing up in families with low adversity. I have since joined the School of Criminology at the Université de Montréal, the Mental Health Institute of Montréal Research Center and the Research Group on Child Maladjustment to pursue my initial goal: understand how early victimization go under the “skin, skull and cells” to affect long-term vulnerabilities to mental health and behavioral difficulties such as aggression and delinquency.
Ouellet-Morin I, Boivin M, Dionne G, Lupien SJ, Arseneault L, Barr RG, Perusse D & Tremblay RE (2008). Variations in Heritability of Cortisol Reactivity to Stress as a Function of Early Familial Adversity among 19-Month-Old Twins. Archives of General Psychiatry, 65: 211-218.
5. What analyte is not measured in saliva now that you would hope could be measured in the future?
Response: It would be interesting to study the sex/gender based patterns of behavioral difficulties following childhood victimization or in individuals under chronic stress in large epidemiological samples using the polypeptide oxytocin measured in saliva.
6. What advice would give young investigators who might be considering working with saliva in their research?
Response: During my training as a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow, I had the opportunity to collaborate with researchers who had extensive experience in psychoneuroendocrinology (e.g., Centre for studies on human stress). These collaborations are priceless as they help to avoid the pitfalls regularly encountered in this field and select the best strategies to minimize their impact. Once the best study design has been selected, another advice would be to take advantage of the recent statistical advances offering new analytical strategies to extract the richness of the data collected (e.g., growth curve modeling and group-based trajectories). These techniques may help you to tackle your hypotheses more precisely and take into account methodological limitations that may have emerged during data collection (e.g., variation in saliva collection time; awakening time, missing samples).
7. Tell us something about you (a hobby or special interest) that we would be surprised to know?
Response: I enjoy cooking and baking, most especially making bread and fresh pasta. There is nothing like a kitchen floor covered in flour!
How you would like to be contacted?
I can be contacted by email:
isabelle.ouellet-morin@umontreal.ca
Affiliations:
Isabelle Ouellet-Morin
Assistant professor
School of Criminology, Université de Montréal, Canada
Researcher at the Mental Health Institute of Montréal Research Center
and the GRIP (Research Group on Child Maladjustment)
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