Jacob Vorstman
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jacobvorstman.bsky.social
Jacob Vorstman
@jacobvorstman.bsky.social
Professor of Psychiatry at The Hospital for Sick Children / University of Toronto.

Editor in Chief of the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

Neurodevelopment, (Child) Psychiatry, Genetics, The Music of Life,
Pinned
I could not find a "schizophrenia research starter pack" so I made one from the researchers in this area I could find.
No need pointing out that it's only a small and incomplete selection, just reach out if you want to be added. 🦋
#schizophrenia
#psychosis

go.bsky.app/T4ZYSD
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
November 5, 2025 at 2:41 AM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
It was great to present at the "Clinical and Scientific Value of Genetics in Child Psychiatry" symposium at #AACAP25 today! Thank you to @jacobvorstman.bsky.social for organizing a wonderful symposium with great talks by @abesterman.bsky.social and Discussant Louise Gallagher! @aacap.bsky.social
October 23, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Super stoked to share our paper just out in Brain @brain1878.bsky.social
LoF variants in DENND2B give rise to an autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental condition characterized by developmental delay, intellectual disability, and episodes of psychosis and/or catatonia. tinyurl.com/4k8hr3bj
Variants in DENND2B are associated with vulnerability for neurodevelopmental impairment, psychosis and catatonia
Murthy et al. report that monoallelic loss of function variants in the DENND2B gene give rise to an autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental disorder characte
tinyurl.com
August 12, 2025 at 6:45 PM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
May 4, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Clear and to the point. @ahalladay.bsky.social only needs a mere 5 minutes to address some of the main points of RFKs April 16th conference on #Autism. Worth the listen and please share.

www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/a...
Autism Science Leader Reacts to RFK Jr.'s Misinformation
'Autism is being oversimplified right now,' says Alycia Halladay
www.medpagetoday.com
April 22, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
What scientists do.

‘Dr. Le Pichon initially defended the notions of a static Earth, but he came to realize that they were incorrect. He returned from the laboratory one day and told his wife, “The conclusions of my thesis are false.”’
Xavier Le Pichon, Who Modeled Movement of Earth’s Crust, Dies at 87
With a computer rendering, he helped scientists understand that the earth, with its shifting tectonic plates, is “an extraordinary living being” that is “continuously changing.”
www.nytimes.com
April 11, 2025 at 10:41 AM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
Xavier Le Pichon, a pioneer in early plate tectonics research died on 22 March. Pichon developed the first global reconstruction of Earth's tectonic plates.
eos.org/articles/pod...
Podcast: Plate Tectonics, the Theory That Changed Earth Science - Eos
Third Pod from the Sun talks with pioneering geophysicist Xavier Le Pichon about what it was like to be a young scientist challenging deeply held theories.
eos.org
April 11, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Not only an iconic scientist, but also an impressively humane person. This interview reveals some of his thinking about what it is to be human:

onbeing.org/programs/xav...
Reading our paper copy of the NY Times I came across Xavier Le Pichon’s obituary! What a loss. A pioneer of plate tectonics. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/s...
April 12, 2025 at 11:01 PM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
Dr Peter Marks, "Vaccines have been studied very extensively for being potentially associated with autism"

"That theory has been debunked"

"One study in Denmark, over 600,000 children. It shows that if anything, children had a lower rate of autism than unvaccinated children"
April 11, 2025 at 10:40 PM
@nytimes.com published a moving obituary of my father in law, who passed away recently. I am forever grateful for his lasting positive impact on my life, and proud of his impressive scientific legacy to the world.
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/s...
Xavier Le Pichon, Who Modeled Movement of Earth’s Crust, Dies at 87
With a computer rendering, he helped scientists understand that the earth, with its shifting tectonic plates, is “an extraordinary living being” that is “continuously changing.”
www.nytimes.com
April 9, 2025 at 8:09 PM
My dearest father-in-law and precious bon-pappa to our children. He taught me how to be a rigorous scientist to examine life, without reducing life to that what we can examine with science.
March 25, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
🟣 L’Administrateur, l’Assemblée des professeurs et toute la communauté du Collège de France apprennent avec une profonde tristesse le décès de Xavier Le Pichon, professeur émérite du Collège de France, titulaire de la chaire de #Géodynamique (1986-2008).
March 24, 2025 at 9:07 AM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
Half of business owners on this Toronto street estimated that more than 25% of their customers arrived by car.

In fact, it was 4%.

And the % of customers who who walked or cycled? 72%.

Retailers routinely overestimate the # of “car customers.” Via @carltonreid.com www.forbes.com/sites/carlto...
March 25, 2025 at 5:44 AM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
Begum-Ali et al. show that in #neurofibromatosis, changes in visual attention can already be measured during infancy; reporting slower development of endogenous visual foraging and in exogenously-driven saccadic reaction times.

Check it out: jneurodevdisorders.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
March 18, 2025 at 1:02 AM
We are here to help... right??? | Klikbeet
YouTube video by Klikbeet
youtube.com
March 14, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Connecting the Toronto-Quebec City corridor with high speed rail could shave 39 million tonnes of carbon pollution in the coming decades, the equivalent of taking nine million gas powered cars off the road for a year, according to project documents.
www.nationalobserver.com/2025/02/20/n...
Trudeau pitches high-speed rail, putting surprising new decarbonization options on the table
High-speed rail alternatives for travel could open up a suite of decarbonizing options not currently on the table. But politics remains a major obstacle to seeing it built.
www.nationalobserver.com
February 21, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Reading a classic, I came across this description of our online experience in 2025, which struck me as pretty accurate... (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1953)

What's lost in the process? Time-wasting thought
February 18, 2025 at 2:21 AM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
Correct. If the birthdate field contains corrupt or mismatched data, it defaults to 1875-05-20, which serves as a flag. May 20, 1875, is the day the international standards and metrics treaty was signed. Everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.
February 15, 2025 at 5:53 AM
“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"

bbc.com/news/article...
China's psychiatric treatment for ‘trouble-makers’
Student among dozens who challenged China’s authorities to have been sent to psychiatric units, BBC finds.
bbc.com
January 26, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
Applications until Feb 15th
Just giving this a boost for those who may not have seen it yet... we have a PI position (molecular and cellular basis of cognition) at The Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto). The position comes with an appointment at Assist/Assoc Prof level at U of T. Share widely!
can-acn.org/scientist-se...
Scientist/Senior Scientist – Research Institute, Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto – Canadian Association for Neuroscience
can-acn.org
January 23, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
In 1922, a group of scientists went to the Toronto General Hospital where diabetic children were kept in wards. Most of them were dying from diabetic ketoacidosis. The scientists went from bed to bed and injected the children with a new purified extract: it was called insulin.
January 23, 2025 at 12:01 PM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
This is an important shift - the long awaited new Ensembl web site is ready for beta testing - is smooth, scrollable genome loveliness +clean views of the complex information - but @ensembl.bsky.social needs your help to get all the use cases out. Come to the webinar, and check out beta.ensembl.org
January 14, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Reposted by Jacob Vorstman
The world has passed “peak child”
January 13, 2025 at 6:18 PM
Very thoughtful commentary!
The idea of polygenic genome editing of human embryos reveals the vast distance between apparently rational and actually unwise.
January 13, 2025 at 1:41 PM