Life Sciences

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

Published on - Science

Authors: Katrina Grasby, Neda Jahanshad, Jodie Painter, Lucía Colodro-Conde, Janita Bralten, Derrek Hibar, Penelope Lind, Fabrizio Pizzagalli, Christopher Ching, Mary Agnes B. Mcmahon, Natalia Shatokhina, Leo Zsembik, Sophia Thomopoulos, Alyssa Zhu, Lachlan Strike, Ingrid Agartz, Saud Alhusaini, Marcio Almeida, Dag Alnæs, Inge Amlien, Micael Andersson, Tyler Ard, Nicola Armstrong, Allison Ashley-Koch, Joshua Atkins, Manon Bernard, Rachel Brouwer, Elizabeth Buimer, Robin Bülow, Christian Bürger, Dara Cannon, Mallar Chakravarty, Qiang Chen, Joshua Cheung, Baptiste Couvy-Duchesne, Anders Dale, Shareefa Dalvie, Tânia de Araujo, Greig de Zubicaray, Sonja de Zwarte, Anouk den Braber, Nhat Trung Doan, Katharina Dohm, Stefan Ehrlich, Hannah-Ruth Engelbrecht, Susanne Erk, Chun Chieh Fan, Iryna Fedko, Sonya Foley, Judith Ford, Masaki Fukunaga, Melanie Garrett, Tian Ge, Sudheer Giddaluru, Aaron Goldman, Melissa Green, Nynke Groenewold, Dominik Grotegerd, Tiril Gurholt, Boris Gutman, Narelle Hansell, Mathew Harris, Marc Harrison, Courtney Haswell, Michael Hauser, Stefan Herms, Dirk Heslenfeld, New Fei Ho, David Hoehn, Per Hoffmann, Laurena Holleran, Martine Hoogman, Jouke-Jan Hottenga, Masashi Ikeda, Deborah Janowitz, Iris Jansen, Tianye Jia, Christiane Jockwitz, Ryota Kanai, Sherif Karama, Dalia Kasperaviciute, Tobias Kaufmann, Sinead Kelly, Masataka Kikuchi, Marieke Klein, Michael Knapp, Annchen Knodt, Bernd Krämer, Max Lam, Thomas Lancaster, Phil Lee, Tristram Lett, Lindsay Lewis, Iscia Lopes-Cendes, Michelle Luciano, Fabio Macciardi, Andre Marquand, Samuel Mathias, Tracy Melzer, Yuri Milaneschi, Nazanin Mirza-Schreiber, Jose Moreira, Thomas Mühleisen, Bertram Müller-Myhsok, Pablo Najt, Soichiro Nakahara, Kwangsik Nho, Loes Olde Loohuis, Dimitri Papadopoulos Orfanos, John Pearson, Toni Pitcher, Benno Pütz, Yann Quidé, Anjanibhargavi Ragothaman, Faisal Rashid, William Reay, Ronny Redlich, Céline Reinbold, Jonathan Repple, Geneviève Richard, Brandalyn Riedel, Shannon Risacher, Cristiane Rocha, Nina Roth Mota, Lauren Salminen, Arvin Saremi, Andrew Saykin, Fenja Schlag, Lianne Schmaal, Peter Schofield, Rodrigo Secolin, Chin Yang Shapland, Li Shen, Jean Shin, Elena Shumskaya, Ida Sønderby, Emma Sprooten, Katherine Tansey, Alexander Teumer, Anbupalam Thalamuthu, Diana Tordesillas-Gutiérrez, Jessica Turner, Anne Uhlmann, Costanza Ludovica Vallerga, Dennis van der Meer, Marjolein van Donkelaar, Liza van Eijk, Theo van Erp, Neeltje van Haren, Daan van Rooij, Marie-José van Tol, Jan Veldink, Ellen Verhoef, Esther Walton, Mingyuan Wang, Yunpeng Wang, Joanna Wardlaw, Wei Wen, Lars Westlye, Christopher Whelan, Stephanie Witt, Katharina Wittfeld, Christiane Wolf, Thomas Wolfers, Jing Qin Wu, Clarissa Yasuda, Dario Zaremba, Zuo Zhang, Marcel Zwiers, Eric Artiges, Amelia Assareh, Rosa Ayesa-Arriola, Aysenil Belger, Christine Brandt, Gregory Brown, Sven Cichon, Joanne Curran, Gareth Davies, Franziska Degenhardt, Michelle Dennis, Bruno Dietsche, Srdjan Djurovic, Colin Doherty, Ryan Espiritu, Daniel Garijo, Yolanda Gil, Penny Gowland, Robert Green, Alexander Häusler, Walter Heindel, Beng-Choon Ho, Wolfgang Hoffmann, Florian Holsboer, Georg Homuth, Norbert Hosten, Clifford Jack, Mihyun Jang, Andreas Jansen, Nathan Kimbrel, Knut Kolskår, Sanne Koops, Axel Krug, Kelvin Lim, Jurjen Luykx, Daniel Mathalon, Karen Mather, Venkata Mattay, Sarah Matthews, Jaqueline Mayoral van Son, Sarah Mcewen, Ingrid Melle, Derek Morris, Bryon Mueller, Matthias Nauck, Jan Nordvik, Markus Nöthen, Daniel O’leary, Nils Opel, Marie-Laure Paillère Martinot, G. Bruce Pike, Adrian Preda, Erin Quinlan, Paul Rasser, Varun Ratnakar, Simone Reppermund, Vidar Steen, Paul Tooney, Fábio Torres, Dick Veltman, James Voyvodic, Robert Whelan, Tonya White, Hidenaga Yamamori, Hieab Adams, Joshua Bis, Stephanie Debette, Charles Decarli, Myriam Fornage, Vilmundur Gudnason, Edith Hofer, M. Arfan Ikram, Lenore Launer, W. Longstreth, Oscar Lopez, Bernard Mazoyer, Thomas Mosley, Gennady Roshchupkin, Claudia Satizabal, Reinhold Schmidt, Sudha Seshadri, Qiong Yang, Marina Alvim, David Ames, Tim Anderson, Ole Andreassen, Alejandro Arias-Vasquez, Mark Bastin, Bernhard Baune, Jean Beckham, John Blangero, Dorret Boomsma, Henry Brodaty, Han Brunner, Randy Buckner, Jan Buitelaar, Juan Bustillo, Wiepke Cahn, Murray Cairns, Vince Calhoun, Vaughan Carr, Xavier Caseras, Svenja Caspers, Gianpiero Cavalleri, Fernando Cendes, Aiden Corvin, Benedicto Crespo-Facorro, John Dalrymple-Alford, Udo Dannlowski, Eco de Geus, Ian Deary, Norman Delanty, Chantal Depondt, Sylvane Desrivières, Gary Donohoe, Thomas Espeseth, Guillén Fernández, Simon Fisher, Herta Flor, Andreas Forstner, Clyde Francks, Barbara Franke, David Glahn, Randy Gollub, Hans Grabe, Oliver Gruber, Asta Håberg, Ahmad Hariri, Catharina Hartman, Ryota Hashimoto, Andreas Heinz, Frans Henskens, Manon Hillegers, Pieter Hoekstra, Avram Holmes, L. Elliot Hong, William Hopkins, Hilleke Hulshoff Pol, Terry Jernigan, Erik Jönsson, René Kahn, Martin Kennedy, Tilo Kircher, Peter Kochunov, John Kwok, Stephanie Le Hellard, Carmel Loughland, Nicholas Martin, Jean-Luc Martinot, Colm McDonald, Katie Mcmahon, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Patricia Michie, Rajendra Morey, Bryan Mowry, Lars Nyberg, Jaap Oosterlaan, Roel Ophoff, Christos Pantelis, Tomas Paus, Zdenka Pausova, Brenda Penninx, Tinca Polderman, Danielle Posthuma, Marcella Rietschel, Joshua Roffman, Laura Rowland, Perminder Sachdev, Philipp Sämann, Ulrich Schall, Gunter Schumann, Rodney Scott, Kang Sim, Sanjay Sisodiya, Jordan Smoller, Iris Sommer, Beate St Pourcain, Dan Stein, Arthur Toga, Julian Trollor, Nic van der Wee, Dennis van ’t Ent, Henry Völzke, Henrik Walter, Bernd Weber, Daniel Weinberger, Margaret Wright, Juan Zhou, Jason Stein, Paul Thompson, Sarah Medland

INTRODUCTION The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities. Variations in human cortical surface area and thickness are associated with neurological, psychological, and behavioral traits and can be measured in vivo by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Studies in model organisms have identified genes that influence cortical structure, but little is known about common genetic variants that affect human cortical structure. RATIONALE To identify genetic variants associated with human cortical structure at both global and regional levels, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain MRI data from 51,665 individuals across 60 cohorts. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 cortical regions with known functional specializations. RESULTS We identified 369 nominally genome-wide significant loci ( P