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Champagne, Frances

Frances A Champagne

Professor
Department of Psychology, Department of Psychiatry



fchampagne@utexas.edu


Office Location
SEA 4.212A

Postal Address
108 E DEAN KEETON ST
AUSTIN, TX 78712

After completing a B.A. in Psychology at Queen’s University (Canada), I delved into the genetic and environmental risk factors in psychopathology at McGill University in the M.Sc. program in Psychiatry.  I then started a Ph.D. in Neuroscience at McGill University examining the role of mother-infant interactions in shaping the brain.  In 2004, I received a fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to conduct postdoctoral research at Cambridge University (UK), examining the role of imprinted genes in development and social behavior.  From 2006-2017, I was a faculty in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University and established a research group examining the epigenetic influence of early life experiences.  My interests focus on the interplay between genes and environment that shape neural and behavioral outcomes and the implications of this dynamic interplay for inheritance of traits

 

Research in the Champagne Lab explores the developmental plasticity that occurs in response to environmental experiences. We are particularly interested in the impact of early life experiences on behavior, the neural mechanisms associated with these environmentally mediated effects and the epigenetic variationthat allows these effects to persist within and across generations leading to the epigenetic inheritance of health and behavior.

 

Robakis TK, Lee S, Werner E, Liu G, Miller M, Wylie, Champagne FA, Salas M, Dod C, Tycko B, Monk C (2020) DNA methylation patterns in T lymphocytes are generally stable in human pregnancies but CD3 methylation is associated with perinatal psychiatric symptoms Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health 3:100044.

Walsh K, McCormack CA, Webster R, Pinto A, Lee S, Feng T, Krakovsky HS, O'Grady SM, Tycko B, Champagne FA, Werner EA, Liu G, Monk C (2019) Maternal prenatal stress phenotypes associate with fetal neurodevelopment and birth outcomes. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 16(48):23996-24005

Champagne FA (2019) Interplay between paternal germline and maternal effects in shaping development: the overlooked importance of behavioural ecology.  Functional Ecology 00:1– 13.

Feldman R, Braun A, Champagne FA (2019) The neural mechanisms and consequences of paternal  caregiving. Nat Reviews Neurosci 20:205–224.

Champagne FA (2018) Beyond the maternal epigenetic legacy. Nat Neurosci 21(6):773-774.

Mashoodh R, Habrylo IB, Gudsnuk KM, Pelle G, Champagne FA (2018) Maternal modulation of paternal effects on offspring development. Proc Biol Sci 285(1874).

Nätt D, Barchiesi R, Murad J, Feng J, Nestler EJ, Champagne FA, Thorsell A (2017) Perinatal Malnutrition Leads to Sexually Dimorphic Behavioral Responses with Associated Epigenetic Changes in the Mouse Brain. Sci Rep 7(1):11082.

Monk C, Feng T, Lee S, Krupska I, Champagne FA, Tycko B (2016) Distress during pregnancy: Epigenetic regulation of placenta glucocorticoid-related genes and fetal neurobehavior. Am J Psychiatry 173(7):705-13.