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
- Zhan, L, Yu, D, Ivankovic, F, Niarchou, M, Domenech-Salgado, L, Barr, CL et al.. Distinct patterns of de novo coding variants contribute to Tourette Syndrome etiology. bioRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.11.04.686570. PubMed PMID:41279245 PubMed Central PMC12637548.
- Douglas, CS, Congdon, E, Huang, C, Seok, D, Cohen, ZD, Akre, S et al.. Assessing the feasibility of large-scale digital sensing for depression and anxiety: The Digital Mental Health Study. medRxiv. 2025; :. doi: 10.1101/2025.10.01.25337105. PubMed PMID:41256142 PubMed Central PMC12622144.
- Gerdes, G, Song, J, Service, SK, Ramirez-Diaz, AM, Diaz-Zuluaga, AM, Arias, A et al.. Socioeconomic and geographic disparities in psychiatric outcomes under Colombia's universal healthcare system. Psychol Med. 2025;55 :e310. doi: 10.1017/S0033291725101694. PubMed PMID:41078276 PubMed Central PMC12551587.
- 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.