Heritability of white matter microstructure in late middle age: A twin study of tract‐based fractional anisotropy and absolute diffusivity indices
Open accessAbstract
There is evidence that differences among individuals in white matter microstructure, as measured with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), are under genetic control. However, little is known about the relative contribution of genetic and environmental effects on different diffusivity indices among late middle‐aged adults. Here, we examined the magnitude of genetic influences for fractional anisotropy (FA), and mean (MD), axial (AD), and radial (RD) diffusivities in male twins aged 56–66 years old. Using an atlas‐based registration approach to delineate individual white matter tracts, we investigated mean DTI‐based indices within the corpus callosum, 12 bilateral tracts and all these regions of interest combined. All four diffusivity indices had high heritability at the global level (72%–80%). The magnitude of genetic effects in individual tracts varied from 0% to 82% for FA, 0% to 81% for MD, 8% to 77% for AD, and 0% to 80% for RD with most of the tracts showing significant heritability estimates. Despite the narrow age range of this community‐based sample, age was correlated with all four diffusivity indices at the global level. In sum, all diffusion indices proved to have substantial heritability for most of the tracts and the heritability estimates were similar in magnitude for different diffusivity measures. Future studies could aim to discover the particular set of genes that underlie the significant heritability of white matter microstructure. Hum Brain Mapp 38:2026–2036, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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Cortical thickness and surface area have considerable genetic influences that vary by cortical region but share little genetic variance, indicating regulation by different sets of genetic influences.
“Cortical thickness and surface area also have considerable genetic influences that vary by cortical region, but interestingly share little shared genetic variance between them, indicating that these two aspects of cortical volume are regulated by different sets of genetic influences 144, 145.”
From Imaging structural and functional brain development in early childhood (2018) · cites this paper as [145]
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Imaging structural and functional brain development in early childhood
Gilmore, J. H., Knickmeyer, R. C., & Gao, W. (2018) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn.2018.1 · Cited by 1,013 · see citing works
- Authors
- Vuoksimaa, E., Panizzon, M. S., Hagler Jr, D. J., Hatton, S. N., Fennema‐Notestine, C., Rinker, D., Eyler, L. T., Franz, C. E., Lyons, M. J., Neale, M. C., Tsuang, M. T., Dale, A. M., & Kremen, W. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Helsinki (FI)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Department of Radiology University of California, San Diego La Jolla California
- University of Southern California (US)
- Boston University (US)
- Virginia Commonwealth University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Vuoksimaa, Eero
- ORCID
- Venue
- Human Brain Mapping
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2016-12-29
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 2026-2036
- ISSN
- 1065-9471 (ISSN-L)
- 1097-0193
- PMC
- PMC5342936
- OpenAlex
- W2567177920
- Cited by
- 58
- References
- 57
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6
- FWCI
- 2.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Human Brain Mapping (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (R01 AG022381, R01 AG018384, R01 AG018386, R01 AG022982, K08 AG047903)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
- Keywords
- white matter microstructure, heritability, genetic factors, fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, axial diffusivity, radial diffusivity, white matter tracts, corpus callosum, late middle age, twin studies, diffusion tensor imaging, age effects
- MeSH terms
- Aged, Corpus Callosum, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Male, Middle Aged, Residence Characteristics, Retrospective Studies, Twins, Dizygotic, Twins, Monozygotic, Anisotropy, Inheritance Patterns, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Gene-Environment Interaction, White Matter
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