Quantifying the Polygenic Architecture of the Human Cerebral Cortex: Extensive Genetic Overlap between Cortical Thickness and Surface Area.

ABSTRACT: The thickness of the cerebral cortical sheet and its surface area are highly heritable traits thought to have largely distinct polygenic architectures. Despite large-scale efforts, the majority of their genetic determinants remain unknown. Our ability to identify causal genetic variants can be improved by employing brain measures that better map onto the biology we seek to understand. Such measures may have fewer variants but with larger effects, that is, lower polygenicity and higher discoverability. Using Gaussian mixture modeling, we estimated the number of causal variants shared between mean cortical thickness and total surface area, as well as the polygenicity and discoverability of regional measures. We made use of UK Biobank data from 30 880 healthy White European individuals (mean

SUBMITTER: van der Meer D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7472200 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature