The emergence of genetic variants linked to brain and cognitive traits in human evolution.

ABSTRACT: Human evolution involved major anatomical transformations, including a rapid increase in brain volume over the last 2 million years. Examination of fossil records provides insight into these physical changes but offers limited information on the evolution of brain function and cognition. A complementary approach integrates genome dating from the Human Genome Dating Project with genome-wide association studies to trace the emergence of genetic variants linked to human traits over 5 million years. We find that genetic variants underlying cortical morphology (~300,000 years, P = 4 × 10-28), fluid intelligence (~500,000 years, P = 1.4 × 10-4), and psychiatric disorders (~475,000 years, P = 5.9 × 10-33) emerged relatively recently in hominin evolution. Among psychiatric phenotypes, variants ass

SUBMITTER: Libedinsky I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12345208 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature