A General Cognitive Ability Factor for the UK Biobank
Open accessAbstract
UK Biobank participants do not have a high-quality measure of intelligence or polygenic scores (PGSs) of intelligence to simultaneously examine the genetic and neural underpinnings of intelligence. We created a standardized measure of general intelligence (g factor) relative to the UK population and estimated its quality. After running a GWAS of g on UK Biobank participants with a g factor of good quality and without neuroimaging data (N = 187,288), we derived a g PGS for UK Biobank participants with neuroimaging data. For individuals with at least one cognitive test, the g factor from eight cognitive tests (N = 501,650) explained 29% of the variance in cognitive test performance. The PGS for British individuals with neuroimaging data (N = 27,174) explained 7.6% of the variance in g. We provided high-quality g factor estimates for most UK Biobank participants and g factor PGSs for UK Biobank participants with neuroimaging data.
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Most evidence points towards shared genetic factors between intelligence and myopia.
“most of the evidence points towards shared genetic factors between intelligence and myopia [22]”
From High intelligence is not associated with a greater propensity for mental health disorders (2023) · cites this paper as [22]
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- Authors
- Williams, C. M., Labouret, G., Wolfram, T., Peyre, H., & Ramus, F.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Bielefeld University (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Williams, Camille Michèle
- Venue
- Behavior Genetics
- Published
- 2022-11-15
- Volume
- 53
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 85-100
- ISSN
- 0001-8244 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-3297
- OpenAlex
- W4309048360
- Cited by
- 18
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 4
- FWCI
- 3.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hal.science
- Licence
- Locations
- Behavior Genetics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- PUB – Publications at Bielefeld University (Bielefeld University) (submittedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-17-EURE-0017, ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetics and Physical Performance
- Keywords
- general intelligence, polygenic risk score, UK Biobank, cognitive tests, neuroimaging, cognitive performance
- MeSH terms
- Cognition, United Kingdom, Humans, Intelligence, Neuropsychological Tests, Biological Specimen Banks, Multifactorial Inheritance
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