PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Fabrizio Pizzagalli
AU  - Guillaume Auzias
AU  - Qifan Yang
AU  - Samuel R. Mathias
AU  - Joshua Faskowitz
AU  - Joshua Boyd
AU  - Armand Amini
AU  - Denis Rivière
AU  - Katie L. McMahon
AU  - Greig I. de Zubicaray
AU  - Nicholas G. Martin
AU  - Jean-François Mangin
AU  - David C. Glahn
AU  - John Blangero
AU  - Margaret J. Wright
AU  - Paul M. Thompson
AU  - Peter Kochunov
AU  - Neda Jahanshad
TI  - The reliability and heritability of cortical folds and their genetic correlations across hemispheres
AID  - 10.1101/795591
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 795591
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/10/08/795591.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/10/08/795591.full
AB  - The structure of the brain’s cortical folds varies considerably in human populations. Specific patterns of cortical variation arise with development and aging, and cortical traits are partially influenced by genetic factors. The degree to which genetic factors affect cortical folding patterning remains unknown, yet may be estimated with large-scale in-vivo brain MRI. Using multiple MRI datasets from around the world, we estimated the reliability and heritability of sulcal morphometric characteristics including length, depth, width, and surface area, for 61 sulci per hemisphere of the human brain. Reliability was assessed across four distinct test-retest datasets. We meta-analyzed the heritability across three independent family-based cohorts (N > 3,000), and one cohort of largely unrelated individuals (N~9,000) to examine the robustness of our findings. Reliability was high (interquartile range for ICC: 0.65-0.85) for sulcal metrics. Most sulcal measures were moderately to highly heritable (heritability estimates = 0.3-0.7). These genetic influences vary regionally, with the earlier forming sulci having higher heritability estimates. The central sulcus, the subcallosal and the collateral fissure were the most highly heritable regions. For some frontal and temporal sulci, left and right genetic influences did not completely overlap, suggesting some lateralization of genetic effects on the cortex.