Shared genetic effects of emotion and subcortical volumes in healthy adults

Ample studies have reported a strong association between emotion and subcortical volumes; still, the underlying mechanism regarding this relation remains unclear. Using a twin design, the current study aimed to explore the intrinsic association between emotion and subcortical volumes by examining their phenotypic, genetic, and environmental correlations. We used a group dataset of 960 individuals from the Human Connectome Project (234 monozygotic twins, 145 dizygotic twins, 581 not twins, males = 454, age = 22-37 years). We found that both emotion and subcortical volumes were heritable. Of the 17 emotional traits, 13 were significantly phenotypically correlated with the volumes of multiple subcortical regions. There was no environmental correlation between emotion and subcortical volumes; however, we found a genetic overlap between overall emotional traits and caudate volume. Taken together, our results showed that emotion and subcortical volumes were heritable and closely related. Although the caudate has been often studied with execution of movement, given that the caudate volume is genetically associated with diverse emotional domains, such as negative affect, psychological well-being, and social relationships, it may suggest that the caudate volume might also be an important factor when studying the brain basis of emotion.