The genetics of brain structure and function

Professor Nicholas Martin, Senior Principal Research Fellow, Laboratory Head – Genetic Epidemiology, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia

We have conducted structural and functional MRI, and also diffusion tensor imaging to explore brain connectivity, on a more than a thousand young adult twins who have previously undergone extensive cognitive and psychiatric assessment. A subsample were measured a second time so reliability of measurement could be estimated. Variance components analysis has been used to estimate heritability of a wide variety of neuroimaging phenotypes. The twins have also undergone genomewide genotyping so we can conduct GWAS for these phenotypes. Cross referencing GWAS hits for neuroimaging phenotypes with those for psychiatric disorders is beginning to illuminate the aetiology of some disorders.