Research
The genetic basis of neurobehavioral traits, development of research tools to facilitate the genetic investigation of complex traits
Appointments
- Director, Biological Samples Processing Core (BSPC)
- Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics
- Informatics Center for Neurogenetics and Neurogenomics (ICNN)
- UCLA Neuroscience Genomics Core
- Professor, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences
- Member, Neuroscience IDP
- Adult Psychiatry
- Brain Research Institute
- CTSI
Biography
The research in Dr. Freimer’s laboratory aims to identify the genetic basis of complex traits, particularly neurobehavioral phenotypes such as bipolar disorder, Tourette Syndrome, and temperament. Together with numerous collaborators the lab has centered its studies around three foci:
1) using genomewide genetic approaches to map neurobehavioral traits
2) developing innovative approaches to phenotype neurobehavioral traits
3) emphasizing the importance of population genetics for gene mapping, particularly the use of population isolates.
Publications
- Frydman-Gani, C, Arias, A, Vallejo, MP, Londoño Martínez, JD, Valencia-Echeverry, J, Castaño, M et al.. Large Language Models for Psychiatric Phenotype Extraction from Electronic Health Records. medRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.08.07.25333172. PubMed PMID:40832382 PubMed Central PMC12363723.
- De La Hoz, JF, Frydman-Gani, C, Arias, A, Perez Vallejo, M, Londoño Martínez, JD, Mena, L et al.. Leveraging Natural Language Processing for Psychiatric Phenotyping from Spanish Electronic Health Records: Enabling the Investigation of Transdiagnostic Symptom Profiles at Scale. Complex Psychiatry. 2025;11 (1):99-112. doi: 10.1159/000546480. PubMed PMID:40677833 PubMed Central PMC12266705.
- van der Veen, T, Tesfaye, M, Yang, JMK, Boltz, T, David, FS, Crinion, S et al.. Immune, Developmental, and Synaptic Pathways Define Bipolar Disorder Clinical Heterogeneity. medRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.06.23.25330155. PubMed PMID:40666370 PubMed Central PMC12262742.
- De la Hoz, JF, Arias, A, Service, SK, Castaño, M, Díaz-Zuluaga, AM, Song, J et al.. Characterisation of serious mental illness trajectories through transdiagnostic clinical features. Br J Psychiatry. 2025; :1-8. doi: 10.1192/bjp.2025.107. PubMed PMID:40545571 PubMed Central PMC12331236.
- O'Connell, KS, Koromina, M, van der Veen, T, Boltz, T, David, FS, Yang, JMK et al.. Genomics yields biological and phenotypic insights into bipolar disorder. Nature. 2025;639 (8056):968-975. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08468-9. PubMed PMID:39843750 PubMed Central PMC12163093.