Genes contributing to subcortical volumes and intellectual ability implicate the thalamus

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Abstract

It has been shown that brain volume and general intellectual ability are to a significant extent influenced by the same genetic factors. Several cortical regions of the brain also show a genetic correlation with intellectual ability, demonstrating that intellectual functioning is probably represented in a heritable distributed network of cortical regions throughout the brain. This study is the first to investigate a genetic association between subcortical volumes and intellectual ability, taking into account the thalamus, caudate nucleus, putamen, globus pallidus, hippocampus, amygdala, and nucleus accumbens using an extended twin design. Genetic modeling was performed on a healthy adult twin sample consisting of 106 twin pairs and 30 of their siblings, IQ data was obtained from 132 subjects. Our results demonstrate that of all subcortical volumes measured, only thalamus volume is significantly correlated with intellectual functioning. Importantly, the association found between thalamus volume and intellectual ability is significantly influenced by a common genetic factor. This genetic factor is also implicated in cerebral brain volume. The thalamus, with its widespread cortical connections, may thus play a key role in human intelligence. Hum Brain Mapp 35:2632–2642, 2014 . © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Rich-club organization of the human connectome.

Martijn P. van den Heuvel, Olaf Sporns (2012)

The human brain is a complex network of interlinked regions. Recent studies have demonstrated the existence of a number of highly connected and highly central neocortical hub regions, regions that play a key role in global information integration between different parts of the network. The potential functional importance of these "brain hubs" is underscored by recent studies showing that disturbances of their structural and functional connectivity profile are linked to neuropathology. This study aims to map out both the subcortical and neocortical hubs of the brain and examine their mutual relationship, particularly their structural linkages. Here, we demonstrate that brain hubs form a so-called "rich club," characterized by a tendency for high-degree nodes to be more densely connected among themselves than nodes of a lower degree, providing important information on the higher-level topology of the brain network. Whole-brain structural networks of 21 subjects were reconstructed using diffusion tensor imaging data. Examining the connectivity profile of these networks revealed a group of 12 strongly interconnected bihemispheric hub regions, comprising the precuneus, superior frontal and superior parietal cortex, as well as the subcortical hippocampus, putamen, and thalamus. Importantly, these hub regions were found to be more densely interconnected than would be expected based solely on their degree, together forming a rich club. We discuss the potential functional implications of the rich-club organization of the human connectome, particularly in light of its role in information integration and in conferring robustness to its structural core.