Myrna Gopnik

Last updated

Myrna Lee Gopnik (born 1935) is a Canadian linguist. She is a professor emerita of linguistics at McGill University. [1] She is known for her research on the KE family, an English family with several members affected by specific language impairment. [2] [3] [4]

Gopnik is generally credited with an important early evaluation of the KE family, and with making this family known to the wider scientific community. Subsequent research by Anthony Monaco, Simon Fisher and colleagues at Oxford University identified a mutation in the FOXP2 gene as a cause of the KE family's disorder (see: A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder. [5]

Gopnik is married to English professor Irwin Gopnik. They have six children together, including Alison (a developmental psychology professor at UC Berkeley), Adam, a novelist and writer for The New Yorker, and Blake Gopnik. [6]

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FOXP2</span> Transcription factor gene of the forkhead box family

Forkhead box protein P2 (FOXP2) is a protein that, in humans, is encoded by the FOXP2 gene. FOXP2 is a member of the forkhead box family of transcription factors, proteins that regulate gene expression by binding to DNA. It is expressed in the brain, heart, lungs and digestive system.

Expressive language disorder is one of the "specific developmental disorders of speech and language" recognised by the tenth edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). As of the eleventh edition, it is considered to be covered by the various categories of developmental language disorder. Transition to the ICD-11 will take place at a different time in different countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sex-determining region Y protein</span> Protein that initiates male sex determination in therian mammals

Sex-determining region Y protein (SRY), or testis-determining factor (TDF), is a DNA-binding protein encoded by the SRY gene that is responsible for the initiation of male sex determination in therian mammals. SRY is an intronless sex-determining gene on the Y chromosome. Mutations in this gene lead to a range of disorders of sex development with varying effects on an individual's phenotype and genotype.

Specific language impairment (SLI) is diagnosed when a child's language does not develop normally and the difficulties cannot be accounted for by generally slow development, physical abnormality of the speech apparatus, autism spectrum disorder, apraxia, acquired brain damage or hearing loss. Twin studies have shown that it is under genetic influence. Although language impairment can result from a single-gene mutation, this is unusual. More commonly SLI results from the combined influence of multiple genetic variants, each of which is found in the general population, as well as environmental influences.

Christopher Francis Higgins is a British molecular biologist, geneticist, academic and scientific advisor. He was the Vice-Chancellor of Durham University from 2007 to 2014. He took early retirement on 30 September 2014, following a discussion at Senate on limiting the powers of the Vice Chancellor. He was previously the director of the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre and Head of Division in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London.

The KE family is a medical name designated for a British family, about half of whom exhibit a severe speech disorder called developmental verbal dyspraxia. It is the first family with speech disorder to be investigated using genetic analyses, by which the speech impairment is discovered to be due to genetic mutation, and from which the gene FOXP2, often dubbed the "language gene", was discovered. Their condition is also the first human speech and language disorder known to exhibit strict Mendelian inheritance.

Dopamine receptor D<sub>1</sub> Protein-coding gene in humans

Dopamine receptor D1, also known as DRD1. It is one of the two types of D1-like receptor family — receptors D1 and D5. It is a protein that in humans is encoded by the DRD1 gene.

cAMP responsive element modulator Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

cAMP responsive element modulator is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CREM gene, and it belongs to the cAMP-responsive element binding protein family. It has multiple isoforms, which act either as repressors or activators. CREB family is important for in regulating transcription in response to various stresses, metabolic and developmental signals. CREM transcription factors also play an important role in many physiological systems, such as cardiac function, circadian rhythms, locomotion and spermatogenesis.

Veronica van Heyningen is an English geneticist who specialises in the etiology of anophthalmia as an honorary professor at University College London (UCL). She previously served as head of medical genetics at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh and the president of The Genetics Society. In 2014 she became president of the Galton Institute. As of 2019 she chairs the diversity committee of the Royal Society, previously chaired by Uta Frith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ichthyostegalia</span> Extinct order of amphibians

Ichthyostegalia is an order of extinct amphibians, representing the earliest landliving vertebrates. The group is thus an evolutionary grade rather than a clade. While the group are recognized as having feet rather than fins, most, if not all, had internal gills in adulthood and lived primarily as shallow water fish and spent minimal time on land.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Lumsden (scientist)</span>

Andrew Gino Lumsden is an English neurobiologist, Emeritus Professor of the University of London and founder in 2000 of the Medical Research Council Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King's College London.

Axel Meyer is a German evolutionary biologist and a professor of zoology and evolutionary biology at the University of Konstanz, Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Dexter</span> British hematologist

(Thomas) Michael Dexter FRS is a British haematologist and director of the Wellcome Trust, from 1998 to 2003.

Professor Nicholas Dixon Hastie CBE, FRS, FRSE is a British geneticist, and former Director of the MRC Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Fisher</span> British geneticist and neuroscientist (born 1970)

Simon E. Fisher is a British geneticist and neuroscientist who has pioneered research into the genetic basis of human speech and language. He is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Professor of language and genetics at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Evolutionary psychology of language is the study of the evolutionary history of language as a psychological faculty within the discipline of evolutionary psychology. It makes the assumption that language is the result of a Darwinian adaptation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Robertson</span> British geneticist

Elizabeth Jane Robertson is a British developmental biologist based at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford. She is Professor of Developmental Biology at Oxford and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow. She is best known for her pioneering work in developmental genetics, showing that genetic mutations could be introduced into the mouse germ line by using genetically altered embryonic stem cells. This discovery opened up a major field of experimentation for biologists and clinicians.

Developmental verbal dyspraxia (DVD), also known as childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and developmental apraxia of speech (DAS), is a condition in which an individual has problems saying sounds, syllables and words. This is not because of muscle weakness or paralysis. The brain has problems planning to move the body parts needed for speech. The individual knows what they want to say, but their brain has difficulty coordinating the muscle movements necessary to say those words.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dorothy V. M. Bishop</span> British psychologist

Dorothy Vera Margaret Bishop is a British psychologist specialising in developmental disorders specifically, developmental language impairments. She is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, where she has been since 1998. Bishop is Principal Investigator for the Oxford Study of Children's Communication Impairments (OSCCI). She is a supernumary fellow of St John's College, Oxford.

Peter Anthony Koopman is an Australian biologist best known for his role in the discovery and study of the mammalian Y-chromosomal sex-determining gene, Sry.

References

  1. "McGill Staff Directory" . Retrieved 23 June 2011.
  2. Gopnik M (1990). "Feature blind grammar and dysphasia". Nature. 344 (6268): 715. Bibcode:1990Natur.344..715G. doi: 10.1038/344715a0 . PMID   2330028. S2CID   4360334.
  3. Gopnik M (1990). "Genetic basis of grammar defect". Nature. 347 (6281): 26. Bibcode:1990Natur.347...26G. doi: 10.1038/347026a0 . PMID   2395458.
  4. Myrna G Crago MB (1991). "Familial aggregation of a developmental language disorder". Cognition. 39 (1): 1–50. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(91)90058-C. PMID   1934976. S2CID   35733622.
  5. Lai CS, Fisher SE, Hurst JA, Vargha-Khadem F, Monaco AP. Nature. 2001 vol. 413(6855):pp. 519–23.)
  6. Moorhead, Laurel. "Author Gopnik on the wonders of babies' brains". Oakland North. Retrieved 25 March 2012.