Human-specific evolutionary markers linked to foetal neurodevelopment modulate brain surface area in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia may represent a trade-off in the evolution of human-specific ontogenetic mechanisms that guide neurodevelopment. Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) are evolutionary markers functioning as neurodevelopmental transcription enhancers that have been associated with brain configuration, neural information processing, and schizophrenia risk. Here, we have investigated the influence of HARs’ polygenic load on neuroanatomical measures through a case-control approach (128 patients with schizophrenia and 115 controls). To this end, we have calculated the global schizophrenia Polygenic Risk Score (Global PRS(SZ)) and that specific to HARs (HARs PRS(SZ)). We have also estimated the polygenic burden restricted to the HARs linked to transcriptional regulatory elements active in the foetal brain (FB-HARs PRS(SZ)) and the adult brain (AB-HARs PRS(SZ)). We have explored the main effects of the PRSs and the PRSs x diagnosis interactions on brain regional cortical thickness (CT) and surface area (SA). The results indicate that a higher FB-HARs PRS(SZ) is associated with patients’ lower SA in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex, the superior temporal cortex, the pars triangularis and the paracentral lobule. While noHARs-derived PRSs show an effect on the risk, our neuroanatomical findings suggest that the human-specific transcriptional regulation during the prenatal period underlies SA variability, highlighting the role of these evolutionary markers in the schizophrenia genomic architecture.