Data Entry: Please note that the research database will be replaced by UNIverse by the end of October 2023. Please enter your data into the system https://universe-intern.unibas.ch. Thanks
Substantial SNP-based heritability estimates for working memory performance
Journal
Translational psychiatry
Volume
4
Number
Adolescent; Adult; Endophenotypes; Female; Genome-Wide Association Study; Humans; Male; Memory, Short-Term, physiology; Neuropsychological Tests, statistics & numerical data; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, genetics; Psychometrics; Reaction Time, genetics; Young Adult
Pages / Article-Number
e438
Mesh terms
Adolescent; Adult; Endophenotypes; Female; Genome-Wide Association Study; Humans; Male; Memory, Short-Term, physiology; Neuropsychological Tests, statistics & numerical data; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, genetics; Psychometrics; Reaction Time, genetics; Young Adult
Abstract
Working memory (WM) is an important endophenotype in neuropsychiatric research and its use in genetic association studies is thought to be a promising approach to increase our understanding of psychiatric disease. As for any genetically complex trait, demonstration of sufficient heritability within the specific study context is a prerequisite for conducting genetic studies of that trait. Recently developed methods allow estimating trait heritability using sets of common genetic markers from genome-wide association study (GWAS) data in samples of unrelated individuals. Here we present single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based heritability estimates (h(2)SNP) for a WM phenotype. A Caucasian sample comprising a total of N=2298 healthy and young individuals was subjected to an N-back WM task. We calculated the genetic relationship between all individuals on the basis of genome-wide SNP data and performed restricted maximum likelihood analyses for variance component estimation to derive the h(2)SNP estimates. Heritability estimates for three 2-back derived WM performance measures based on all autosomal chromosomes ranged between 31 and 41%, indicating a substantial SNP-based heritability for WM traits. These results indicate that common genetic factors account for a prominent part of the phenotypic variation in WM performance. Hence, the application of GWAS on WM phenotypes is a valid method to identify the molecular underpinnings of WM.
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
ISSN/ISBN
Adolescent; Adult; Endophenotypes; Female; Genome-Wide Association Study; Humans; Male; Memory, Short-Term, physiology; Neuropsychological Tests, statistics & numerical data; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, genetics; Psychometrics; Reaction Time, genetics; Young Adult
