Guidelines for genetic ancestry inference created through roundtable discussions.

The use of genetic and genomic technology to infer ancestry is commonplace in a variety of contexts, particularly in biomedical research and for direct-to-consumer genetic testing. In 2013 and 2015, two roundtables engaged a diverse group of stakeholders toward the development of guidelines for inferring genetic ancestry in academia and industry. This report shares the stakeholder groups' work and provides an analysis of, commentary on, and views from the groundbreaking and sustained dialogue. We describe the engagement processes and the stakeholder groups' resulting statements and proposed guidelines. The guidelines focus on five key areas: application of genetic ancestry inference, assumptions and confidence/laboratory and statistical methods, terminology and population identifiers, impact on individuals and groups, and communication or translation of genetic ancestry inferences. We delineate the terms and limitations of the guidelines and discuss their critical role in advancing the development and implementation of best practices for inferring genetic ancestry and reporting the results. These efforts should inform both governmental regulation and self-regulation.

Toward a Compassionate Intersectional Neuroscience: Increasing Diversity and Equity in Contemplative Neuroscience.

Mindfulness and compassion meditation are thought to cultivate prosocial behavior. However, the lack of diverse representation within both scientific and participant populations in contemplative neuroscience may limit generalizability and translation of prior findings. To address these issues, we propose a research framework called Intersectional Neuroscience which adapts research procedures to be more inclusive of under-represented groups. Intersectional Neuroscience builds inclusive processes into research design using two main approaches: 1) community engagement with diverse participants, and 2) individualized multivariate neuroscience methods to accommodate neural diversity. We tested the feasibility of this framework in partnership with a diverse U.S. meditation center (East Bay Meditation Center, Oakland, CA). Using focus group and community feedback, we adapted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) screening and recruitment procedures to be inclusive of participants from various under-represented groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, gender and sexual minorities, people with disabilities, neuropsychiatric disorders, and/or lower income. Using person-centered screening and study materials, we recruited and scanned 15 diverse meditators (80% racial/ethnic minorities, 53% gender and sexual minorities). The participants completed the EMBODY task - which applies individualized machine learning algorithms to fMRI data - to identify mental states during breath-focused meditation, a basic skill that stabilizes attention to support interoception and compassion. All 15 meditators' unique brain patterns were recognized by machine learning algorithms significantly above chance levels. These individualized brain patterns were used to decode the internal focus of attention throughout a 10-min breath-focused meditation period, specific to each meditator. These data were used to compile individual-level attention profiles during meditation, such as the percentage time attending to the breath, mind wandering, or engaging in self-referential processing. This study provides feasibility of employing an intersectional neuroscience approach to include diverse participants and develop individualized neural metrics of meditation practice. Through inclusion of more under-represented groups while developing reciprocal partnerships, intersectional neuroscience turns the research process into an embodied form of social action.

Corrigendum: Toward a Compassionate Intersectional Neuroscience: Increasing Diversity and Equity in Contemplative Neuroscience.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.573134.].

The "contemporary synthesis": when politically inclusive genomic science relies on biological notions of race.

This essay outlines the emergence of a contemporary synthesis regarding racial thinking in genetic science and in society more broadly. A departure from what Julian Huxley in 1942 termed the "modern synthesis," the contemporary version does not purport to leave race thinking behind in favor of evolution, population genetics, and population-based accounts of natural selection and human diversity. Specifically, the contemporary synthesis blends old concepts (such as that of pure human "types," located within continental land masses) with new attitudes (democratic inclusion, multicultural diversity, and anti-racism). Through various examples, the essay shows how this new synthesis combines ideas about human biological difference that draw on measures of physical characteristics and human genetic material that are both race and population based, yet conflated. This specific amalgam allows old notions of racial types to thrive through conceptual framings that comprise ideas that were once imagined to have the potential to liberate society from racial thinking--and that today remain attached to ideas of progress. As an emergent dynamic, the contemporary synthesis holds the possibility of reinvigorating racism, while simultaneously possessing the potential to promote antiracist science education, disease awareness, and social justice efforts.

The biologistical construction of race: 'admixture' technology and the new genetic medicine.

This paper presents an ethnographic case study of the use of race in two interconnected laboratories of medical genetics. Specifically, it examines how researchers committed to reducing health disparities in Latinos with asthma advance hypotheses and structure research to show that relative frequencies of genetic markers characterize commonly understood groupings of race. They do this first by unapologetically advancing the idea that peoples whom they take to be of the 'Old World', or 'Africans', 'Europeans', 'East Asians', and 'Native Americans', can serve as putatively pure reference populations against which genetic risk for common diseases such as asthma can be calculated for those in the 'New World'. Technologically, they deploy a tool called ancestry informative markers (AIMs), which are a collection of genetic sequence variants said to differ in present-day West Africans, East Asians, Europeans, and (ideally Pre-Columbian) Native Americans. I argue that this technology, compelling as it may be to a range of actors who span the political spectrum, is, at base, designed to bring about a correspondence of familiar ideas of race and supposed socially neutral DNA. This correspondence happens, in part, as the scientists in question often bracket the environment while privileging racialized genetic variance as the primary source of health disparities for common disease, in this case between Mexicans and Puerto Ricans with asthma. With their various collaborators, these scientists represent a growing movement within medical genetics to re-consider race and 'racial admixture' as biogenetically valid points of departure. Furthermore, many actors at the center of this ethnography focus on race as a function of their personal identity politics as scientists of color. This to say, they are driven not by racist notions of human difference, but by a commitment to reduce health disparities and to include 'their' communities in what they describe as the 'genetic revolution'.

Discriminate biopower and everyday biopolitics: views on sickle cell testing in Dakar.

Many physicians in Senegal and France, where most Senegalese sickle cell specialists are partially trained, assume that genetic testing that could imply selective abortion for people with sickle cell would run counter to the religious and cultural ethics of people living in Dakar. Senegalese affected by this genetic disease, however, often cite "traditional" rationales to indicate why such testing, if offered, might appeal to them. The reluctance of medical practitioners to entertain such testing technologies for their patients evinces a protectionist attitude toward care--an attitude that emerges within a context in which family planning and a blind concentration on HIV/AIDS have created a public health system that completely overlooks sickle cell anemia. This discriminate biopower leaves everyday biopolitics largely in the hands of families faced with this disease. It falls to them to pragmatically calculate the value that genetic testing may, or may not, hold for their own lives.