The heritability of multi-modal connectivity in human brain activity

Abstract
Data availability
Article and author information
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Abstract

Patterns of intrinsic human brain activity exhibit a profile of functional connectivity that is associated with behaviour and cognitive performance, and deteriorates with disease. This paper investigates the relative importance of genetic factors and the common environment between twins in determining this functional connectivity profile. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on 820 subjects from the Human Connectome Project, and magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings from a subset, the heritability of connectivity between 39 cortical regions was estimated. On average over all connections, genes account for about 15% of the observed variance in fMRI connectivity (and about 10% in alpha-band and 20% in beta-band oscillatory power synchronisation), which substantially exceeds the contribution from the environment shared between twins. Therefore, insofar as twins share a common upbringing, it appears that genes, rather than the developmental environment, play a dominant role in determining the coupling of neuronal activity.

Data availability

The following previously published data sets were used

1. Van Essen DC et al.
(2013) The Human Connectome Project HCP500 data release
Open access dataset available from ConnectomeDB (https://db.humanconnectome.org/app/template/Login.vm). Account registration is required and access to certain data elements such as family structure is subject to restricted use terms (please see http://www.humanconnectome.org/study/hcp-young-adult/data-use-terms).

http://www.humanconnectome.org/study/hcp-young-adult/document/900-subjects-data-release
1. Larson-Prior LJ
(2013) The Human Connectome Project MEG2 data release
Open access dataset available from ConnectomeDB (https://db.humanconnectome.org/app/template/Login.vm). Account registration is required and access to certain data elements such as family structure is subject to restricted use terms (please see http://www.humanconnectome.org/study/hcp-young-adult/data-use-terms).

http://www.humanconnectome.org/study/hcp-young-adult/document/900-subjects-data-release

Article and author information

Author details

Giles L Colclough

Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

For correspondence
giles.colclough@ohba.ox.ac.uk

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1074-7186
Stephen M Smith

Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Tom E Nichols

Department of Statistics and WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Anderson M Winkler

Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Stamatios N Sotiropoulos

Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Matthew F Glasser

School of Medicine, Washington University, St. Louis, United States

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
David C Van Essen

School of Medicine, Washington University in St Louis, St. Louis, United States

Competing interests
David C Van Essen, Senior editor, eLife.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-7044-4721
Mark W Woolrich

Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

Funding

Research Councils UK (Digital Economy Programme (EP/G036861/1,Centre for Doctoral Training in Healthcare Innovation))

Giles L Colclough

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq,211534/2013-7)

Anderson M Winkler

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/L023067)

Stamatios N Sotiropoulos

National Institutes of Health (R01EB015611-01; NRSA fellowship (F30-MH097312); 1U54MH091657)

Tom E Nichols
Matthew F Glasser
David C Van Essen

National Institute for Health Research (NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre)

Mark W Woolrich

Medical Research Council (MRC UK MEG Partnership Grant (MR/K005464/1))

Giles L Colclough
Mark W Woolrich

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: HCP data were acquired using protocols approved by the Washington University institutional review board. Informedconsent was obtained from subjects. Anonymised data are publicly available from ConnectomeDB (db.humanconnectome.org; Hodge et al. (2016)). Certain parts of the dataset used in this study, such as the family structures of the subjects, are available subject to restricted data usage terms, requiring researchers to ensure that the anonymity of subjects is protected (Van Essen et al., 2013).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.