Heritability of Subcortical Grey Matter Structures

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Genetics
• Brain Imaging

Background:

• Subcortical grey matter structures are crucial for cognitive, affective, social, and motor functions.
• Volume changes in these structures are associated with aging and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the heritability of six subcortical brain volumes (amygdala, caudate nucleus, pallidum, putamen, thalamus, nucleus accumbens) and four general brain volumes in adult twins.
• To compare the results from two automated volumetry pipelines: Computational Anatomy Toolbox 12 (CAT12) and volBrain.

Main Methods:

• Utilized brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 118 healthy adult twins (Hungarian Twin Registry).
• Employed CAT12 and volBrain for automated calculation of subcortical and general brain volumes.
• Applied univariate ACE model to age- and sex-adjusted intra-pair correlations from monozygotic and dizygotic twins.

Main Results:

• High heritability estimates (0.75-0.95 for CAT12, 0.69-0.92 for volBrain) were found for most subcortical volumes, including amygdala, caudate nucleus, pallidum, putamen, and nucleus accumbens.
• Thalamus volume showed a stronger influence from common environmental factors (C = 0.45-0.73 with CAT12, C = 0.72-0.85 with volBrain).
• Strong correlations (r = 0.74-0.94) were observed between the CAT12 and volBrain pipelines for all measured volumes.

Conclusions:

• The majority of studied subcortical brain volumes demonstrate strong heritability.
• Thalamus volume is significantly influenced by shared environmental factors, irrespective of the segmentation method used.
• Findings underscore the genetic basis of subcortical volume variations and their relevance to associated diseases.