Archival ReportCortical Thickness Is Influenced by Regionally Specific Genetic Factors
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were part of the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (VETSA). An overview of the VETSA project can be found elsewhere (13). A total of 1237 twins participated in wave one of this longitudinal study, and a subset underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This article is based on 474 twins who had analyzable scans to date; the twin analyses included 404 twins: 110 monozygotic (MZ) and 92 dizygotic (DZ) pairs. To date, 56% of the MRI study participants have had zygosity determined by 25
Heritability Maps of Cortical Thickness
Heritability varied substantially across the cortical surface from as low as .16 to as high as .73 (Figure 1;Figure S2 in Supplement 1 for other views). The highest heritabilities were observed bilaterally in posterior frontal and anterior medial occipital cortex and temporal pole in the left hemisphere. The lowest heritability estimates were observed in middle and inferior lateral temporal cortex (especially in the left hemisphere) and anterior prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex (especially
Patterns of Heritability
There was substantial variability in the extent of genetic and environmental influences across brain regions, but the pattern does not lend itself to any simple interpretation in terms of cortex type or functional systems. A dissociation between primary and association cortex cannot adequately account for the findings because frontal and temporal association areas are on the opposite extremes of heritability (higher in frontal and lower in temporal), whereas primary visual and somatosensory
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2022, Trends in Cognitive SciencesCitation Excerpt :Similarly, genetic correlations for relative brain region size are low in three-spined sticklebacks [89]. Finally, human genome-wide association studies and twin studies suggest that: (i) genetic variants tend to show brain region-specific volumetric effects [90], (ii) there are substantial region-specific genetic contributions to the heritability of various subcortical region volumes [91], (iii) genetic influences on cortical versus subcortical brain structures tend to be particularly distinct [92], and (iv) genetic effects on cortical thickness are largely region-specific [93]. Overall, new work suggests that neuroanatomical changes in response to selection are not highly constrained by a conserved developmental program (or pleiotropy).
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2020, Psychiatry Research - NeuroimagingCitation Excerpt :Although cortical thickness in several regions were significantly different between groups on region wise analysis, this significance was negated after controlling for multiple comparisons. Our findings add to previous studies which investigated the abnormalities in cortical surface area, volume, and thickness in BD (Abé et al., 2016; Rimol et al., 2010). Our findings of cortical abnormalities in the rostral middle frontal gyrus (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - DLPFC), right post central gyrus, bilateral cuneus, and left middle temporal gyrus is in tune with previous studies (Hibar et al., 2017; Robinson et al., 2009; Wessa and Linke, 2009).
Authors WSK and AMD contributed equally to this work.