scholarly journals Human cognitive ability is influenced by genetic variation in components of postsynaptic signalling complexes assembled by NMDA receptors and MAGUK proteins

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. e341-e341 ◽  
Author(s):  
W D Hill ◽  
G Davies ◽  
L N van de Lagemaat ◽  
A Christoforou ◽  
R E Marioni ◽  
...  
2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1781) ◽  
pp. 20140117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riccardo E. Marioni ◽  
Lars Penke ◽  
Gail Davies ◽  
Jennifer E. Huffman ◽  
Caroline Hayward ◽  
...  

Human cognitive ability shows consistent, positive associations with fitness components across the life-course. Underlying genetic variation should therefore be depleted by selection, which is not observed. Genetic variation in general cognitive ability (intelligence) could be maintained by a mutation–selection balance, with rare variants contributing to its genetic architecture. This study examines the association between the total number of rare stop-gain/loss, splice and missense exonic variants and cognitive ability in childhood and old age in the same individuals. Exome array data were obtained in the Lothian Birth Cohorts of 1921 and 1936 (combined N = 1596). General cognitive ability was assessed at age 11 years and in late life (79 and 70 years, respectively) and was modelled against the total number of stop-gain/loss, splice, and missense exonic variants, with minor allele frequency less than or equal to 0.01, using linear regression adjusted for age and sex. In both cohorts and in both the childhood and late-life models, there were no significant associations between rare variant burden in the exome and cognitive ability that survived correction for multiple testing. Contrary to our a priori hypothesis, we observed no evidence for an association between the total number of rare exonic variants and either childhood cognitive ability or late-life cognitive ability.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 3471-3481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tian Ge ◽  
Chia-Yen Chen ◽  
Alysa E Doyle ◽  
Richard Vettermann ◽  
Lauri J Tuominen ◽  
...  

Abstract Individual differences in educational attainment are linked to differences in intelligence, and predict important social, economic, and health outcomes. Previous studies have found common genetic factors that influence educational achievement, cognitive performance and total brain volume (i.e., brain size). Here, in a large sample of participants from the UK Biobank, we investigate the shared genetic basis between educational attainment and fine-grained cerebral cortical morphological features, and associate this genetic variation with a related aspect of cognitive ability. Importantly, we execute novel statistical methods that enable high-dimensional genetic correlation analysis, and compute high-resolution surface maps for the genetic correlations between educational attainment and vertex-wise morphological measurements. We conduct secondary analyses, using the UK Biobank verbal–numerical reasoning score, to confirm that variation in educational attainment that is genetically correlated with cortical morphology is related to differences in cognitive performance. Our analyses relate the genetic overlap between cognitive ability and cortical thickness measurements to bilateral primary motor cortex as well as predominantly left superior temporal cortex and proximal regions. These findings extend our understanding of the neurobiology that connects genetic variation to individual differences in educational attainment and cognitive performance.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tian Ge ◽  
Chia-Yen Chen ◽  
Alysa E. Doyle ◽  
Richard Vettermann ◽  
Lauri J. Tuominen ◽  
...  

AbstractIndividual differences in educational attainment are linked to differences in intelligence, and predict important social, economic and health outcomes. Previous studies have found common genetic factors that influence educational achievement, cognitive performance and total brain volume (i.e., brain size). Here, in a large sample of participants from the UK Biobank, we investigate the shared genetic basis between educational attainment and fine-grained cerebral cortical morphological features, and associate this genetic variation with a related aspect of cognitive ability. Importantly, we execute novel statistical methods that enable high-dimensional genetic correlation analysis, and compute high-resolution surface maps for the genetic correlations between educational attainment and vertex-wise morphological measurements. We conduct secondary analyses, using the UK Biobank verbal-numerical reasoning score, to confirm that variation in educational attainment that is genetically correlated with cortical morphology is related to differences in cognitive performance. Our analyses reveal the genetic overlap between cognitive ability and cortical thickness measurements in bilateral primary motor cortex and predominantly left superior temporal cortex and proximal regions. These findings may contribute to our understanding of the neurobiology that connects genetic variation to individual differences in educational attainment and cognitive performance.


2010 ◽  
Vol 68 (12) ◽  
pp. 1126-1133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian-Ping Zhang ◽  
Katherine E. Burdick ◽  
Todd Lencz ◽  
Anil K. Malhotra

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (10) ◽  
pp. 1563-1568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine E. Burdick ◽  
Todd Lencz ◽  
Birgit Funke ◽  
Christine T. Finn ◽  
Philip R. Szeszko ◽  
...  

2010 ◽  
Vol 167 (4) ◽  
pp. 436-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine E. Burdick ◽  
Pamela DeRosse ◽  
John M. Kane ◽  
Todd Lencz ◽  
Anil K. Malhotra

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 318-327
Author(s):  
Philipp Alexander Freund ◽  
Vanessa Katharina Jaensch ◽  
Franzis Preckel

Abstract. The current study investigates the behavior of task-specific, current achievement motivation (CAM: interest in the task, probability of success, perceived challenge, and fear of failure) across a variety of reasoning tasks featuring verbal, numerical, and figural content. CAM is conceptualized as a state-like variable, and in order to assess the relative stability of the four CAM variables across different tasks, latent state trait analyses are conducted. The major findings indicate that the degree of challenge a test taker experiences and the fear of failing a given task appear to be relatively stable regardless of the specific task utilized, whereas interest and probability of success are more directly influenced by task-specific characteristics and demands. Furthermore, task performance is related to task-specific interest and probability of success. We discuss the implications and benefits of these results with regard to the use of cognitive ability tests in general. Importantly, taking motivational differences between test takers into account appears to offer valuable information which helps to explain differences in task performance.


2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalind Arden ◽  
Nicole Harlaar ◽  
Robert Plomin

Abstract. An association between intelligence at age 7 and a set of five single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) has been identified and replicated. We used this composite SNP set to investigate whether the associations differ between boys and girls for general cognitive ability at ages 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, and 10 years. In a longitudinal community sample of British twins aged 2-10 (n > 4,000 individuals), we found that the SNP set is more strongly associated with intelligence in males than in females at ages 7, 9, and 10 and the difference is significant at 10. If this finding replicates in other studies, these results will constitute the first evidence of the same autosomal genes acting differently on intelligence in the two sexes.


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