Tiina Paunio

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/sleep-and-health

I performed my PhD work at the laboratory of Professor Leena Peltonen-Palotie  during 1990-1995. This work led to DNA diagnostics of gelsolin-related amyloidosis and revelation of pathogenic processing of mutant gelsolin in neuronal cells. During a 2-year post doc period (1996-1998) at LGN-CNRS, Paris, I developed novel recombinant adenoviral vectors for gene therapy on an experimental model of Parkinson’s disease. Then, my focus shifted towards research on psychiatric traits and I started working as a project leader for large international collaboration on schizophrenia. This work led to understanding the truly heterogeneous background of psychosis as well as connections between genes, cognitive disturbances, and schizophrenia.

From year 2003, my main research focus has been on understanding the molecular mechanisms for disturbed mood and sleep and their relationship. We have revealed association of two genes, DISC1 and DAOA, to intermediate traits for BPD and we were able to replicate some of the findings from earlier genome-wide association studies. We found in a large nation-wide cohort of twins that poor sleep predicted depressed mood in a consistent pattern, while depressed mood did not predict poor sleep, evidencing for the central role of disturbed sleep in mood disorders. We have also found inter-individual variability in sleep quality-related responses to stressful life events and relation of childhood traumatic events to insomnia in adulthood. We found in a systematic association study in a population-based sample that some susceptibility genes associate to depression only in the presence of disturbed sleep. We also found a link between a bipolar susceptibility gene and visual performance, evidencing further for the direct neurobiological link between visual perception, circadian rhythm, and regulation of mood.