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Behavioral–genetic associations in the Human Connectome Project

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Abstract

The Human Connectome Project (HCP) provides a rich dataset of quantitative and domain-specific behavioral measures from twins and extensive family structures. This makes the dataset a unique and a valuable resource to investigate heritability and determine individual differences. Using a set of measures of behavioral domains (motor, emotion, personality, sensory, and cognition), we estimated the intraclass correlations (ICCs) and heritability of 56 behavioral measures for 4 genetically identified groups of participants: monozygotic (MZ) twins, dizygotic (DZ) twins, non-twin siblings (SB), and unrelated individuals (NR). The ICCs range varied among behavioral domains but systematically so among the four genetic groups. We found the same rank order of ICCs, from the highest values for MZ twins, statistically significantly smaller for the DZ twins and sibling group (compared to MZ), and close to zero for NR. The mean heritability values of the five behavioral domains were: cognition h2 = 0.405, emotion h2 = 0.316, motor h2 = 0.138, personality h2 = 0.444, and sensory h2 = 0.193. These domains share overlapping brain networks. The heritability of motor domain was significantly smaller than cognitive, personality, and emotion domains. These findings provide new insight into the effect of genetics on the various diverse behavioral measures.

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Acknowledgements

Data were provided by the Human Connectome Project, WU-Minn Consortium (Principal Investigators: David Van Essen and Kamil Ugurbil; 1U54MH091657) funded by the 16 NIH Institutes and Centers that support the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research; and by the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brain Sciences Center (11B), Department of Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Minneapolis VAHCS, One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN, 55417, USA

    Peka Christova, Jasmine Joseph & Apostolos P. Georgopoulos

  2. Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Peka Christova & Apostolos P. Georgopoulos

  3. Graduate Program in Biomedical Informatics and Computational Biology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Jasmine Joseph

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Apostolos P. Georgopoulos

  5. Department of Neurology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Apostolos P. Georgopoulos

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  1. Peka Christova
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Correspondence to Peka Christova.

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Communicated by Francesco Lacquaniti.

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Christova, P., Joseph, J. & Georgopoulos, A.P. Behavioral–genetic associations in the Human Connectome Project. Exp Brain Res 238, 2445–2456 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-020-05893-w

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