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The impact of early adversity and education on genetic and brain morphological predictors of cognitive ability

Cognitive ability is a strong predictor of occupational achievement, quality of life and physical health. While variation in cognition is strongly heritable and has been robustly associated with early environment and brain morphology, little is known about how these factors combine and interact to e...

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Autores principales: Corley, Emma, Fahey, Laura, Fitzgerald, Joan, Holleran, Laurena, Walton, Esther, Morris, Derek W., Donohoe, Gary
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10393420/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37403260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gbb.12850
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author Corley, Emma
Fahey, Laura
Fitzgerald, Joan
Holleran, Laurena
Walton, Esther
Morris, Derek W.
Donohoe, Gary
author_facet Corley, Emma
Fahey, Laura
Fitzgerald, Joan
Holleran, Laurena
Walton, Esther
Morris, Derek W.
Donohoe, Gary
author_sort Corley, Emma
collection PubMed
description Cognitive ability is a strong predictor of occupational achievement, quality of life and physical health. While variation in cognition is strongly heritable and has been robustly associated with early environment and brain morphology, little is known about how these factors combine and interact to explain this variation in cognition. To address this, we modelled the relationship between common genetic variation, grey matter volume, early life adversity and education and cognitive ability in a UK Biobank sample of N = 5237 individuals using structural equation modelling. We tested the hypotheses that total grey matter volume would mediate the association between genetic variation and cognitive ability, and that early life adversity and educational attainment would moderate this relationship. Common genetic variation, grey matter volume and early life adversity were each significant predictors in the model, explaining ~15% of variation in cognitive ability. Contrary to our hypothesis, grey matter volume did not mediate the relation between genetic variation and cognition performance. Neither did early life adversity or educational attainment moderate this relation, although educational attainment was observed to moderate the relationship between grey matter volume and cognitive performance. We interpret these findings in terms of the modest explanatory value of currently estimated polygenic scores accounting for variation in cognitive performance (~5%), making potential mediating and moderating variables difficult to confirm.
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spelling pubmed-103934202023-08-02 The impact of early adversity and education on genetic and brain morphological predictors of cognitive ability Corley, Emma Fahey, Laura Fitzgerald, Joan Holleran, Laurena Walton, Esther Morris, Derek W. Donohoe, Gary Genes Brain Behav Original Articles Cognitive ability is a strong predictor of occupational achievement, quality of life and physical health. While variation in cognition is strongly heritable and has been robustly associated with early environment and brain morphology, little is known about how these factors combine and interact to explain this variation in cognition. To address this, we modelled the relationship between common genetic variation, grey matter volume, early life adversity and education and cognitive ability in a UK Biobank sample of N = 5237 individuals using structural equation modelling. We tested the hypotheses that total grey matter volume would mediate the association between genetic variation and cognitive ability, and that early life adversity and educational attainment would moderate this relationship. Common genetic variation, grey matter volume and early life adversity were each significant predictors in the model, explaining ~15% of variation in cognitive ability. Contrary to our hypothesis, grey matter volume did not mediate the relation between genetic variation and cognition performance. Neither did early life adversity or educational attainment moderate this relation, although educational attainment was observed to moderate the relationship between grey matter volume and cognitive performance. We interpret these findings in terms of the modest explanatory value of currently estimated polygenic scores accounting for variation in cognitive performance (~5%), making potential mediating and moderating variables difficult to confirm. Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2023-07-04 /pmc/articles/PMC10393420/ /pubmed/37403260 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gbb.12850 Text en © 2023 The Authors. Genes, Brain and Behavior published by International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Corley, Emma
Fahey, Laura
Fitzgerald, Joan
Holleran, Laurena
Walton, Esther
Morris, Derek W.
Donohoe, Gary
The impact of early adversity and education on genetic and brain morphological predictors of cognitive ability
title The impact of early adversity and education on genetic and brain morphological predictors of cognitive ability
title_full The impact of early adversity and education on genetic and brain morphological predictors of cognitive ability
title_fullStr The impact of early adversity and education on genetic and brain morphological predictors of cognitive ability
title_full_unstemmed The impact of early adversity and education on genetic and brain morphological predictors of cognitive ability
title_short The impact of early adversity and education on genetic and brain morphological predictors of cognitive ability
title_sort impact of early adversity and education on genetic and brain morphological predictors of cognitive ability
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10393420/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37403260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gbb.12850
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