Inter-individual differences in human brain structure and morphometry link to variation in demographics and behavior

Abstract
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Abstract

We perform a comprehensive integrative analysis of multiple structural MR-based brain features and find for the first-time strong evidence relating inter-individual brain structural variations to a wide range of demographic and behavioral variates across a large cohort of young healthy human volunteers. Our analyses reveal that a robust 'positive-negative' spectrum of behavioral and demographic variates, recently associated to covariation in brain function, can already be identified using only structural features, highlighting the importance of careful integration of structural features in any analysis of inter-individual differences in functional connectivity and downstream associations with behavioral/demographic variates.

Data availability

All data analysed during this study are anonymised and publicly available from ConnectomeDB (db.humanconnectome.org; Hodge et al., 2016). It can be freely downloaded after creation of an account at "https://db.humanconnectome.org/app/template/Login.vm". Certain parts of the dataset used in this study, such as the age 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). Relevant data generated by the analyses we performed are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Further details can be found at https://github.com/allera/Llera_elife_2019_1.

Article and author information

Author details

Alberto Llera

Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands

For correspondence
a.llera@donders.ru.nl

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8358-8625
Thomas Wolfers

Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Peter Mulders

Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Christian F Beckmann

Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Wellcome Trust UK Strategic Award (098369/Z/12/Z)

Christian F Beckmann

Nederlands Organization for Scientific Research (864.12.003)

Christian F Beckmann

Synergy Grant by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Programme (ERC Grant Agreement no.319456)

Christian F Beckmann

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. Informed consent 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 age 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). Informed consent and consent to publish was obtained from the Human Connectome Project according to the declaration of Helsinki. Research conducted at the Donders Center for Cognitive Neuroimage is covered by the protocol approved by the 'Commissie Mensgebonden Onderzoek (CMO) Regio Arnhem-Nijmegen' registered under CMO number 2014/288.

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.