Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) allows for the mapping and analysis of white matter (WM) microstructure and structural connectivity in the brain. We describe and extend the Medial Tractography Analysis (MeTA) method to capture the regional along-tract variation of WM microstructure by incorporating hyperplanes to capture curvature related to cortical connections. We performed heritability and genetic correlation analysis of the fractional anisotropy (FA) of the left and right corticospinal tract (CST) along its length using data from 20,734 participants in the UK Biobank. We found that segment-specific heritability ( \(h^2_{\textrm{SNP}}\) ) within the CST varied specific segments and showed higher heritability than the average FA across the full CST. Genetic and phenotypic correlations along CST segments of FA reveal moderate to high correlations and suggest shared genetic influences on FA across segments with many strong lateralized correlations. Using hierarchical clustering, we identified two primary genetically correlated clusters along the CST. These findings indicate homogeneous genetic factors within each cluster and regional variability in genetic influences across clusters. Our source code is available at https://github.com/USC-LoBeS/MeTA .

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Heritability and Genetic Correlations Along the Corticospinal Tract

  • Iyad Ba Gari,
  • Ravi R. Bhatt,
  • Fang-Chang Yeh,
  • Neda Jahanshad

摘要

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) allows for the mapping and analysis of white matter (WM) microstructure and structural connectivity in the brain. We describe and extend the Medial Tractography Analysis (MeTA) method to capture the regional along-tract variation of WM microstructure by incorporating hyperplanes to capture curvature related to cortical connections. We performed heritability and genetic correlation analysis of the fractional anisotropy (FA) of the left and right corticospinal tract (CST) along its length using data from 20,734 participants in the UK Biobank. We found that segment-specific heritability ( \(h^2_{\textrm{SNP}}\) ) within the CST varied specific segments and showed higher heritability than the average FA across the full CST. Genetic and phenotypic correlations along CST segments of FA reveal moderate to high correlations and suggest shared genetic influences on FA across segments with many strong lateralized correlations. Using hierarchical clustering, we identified two primary genetically correlated clusters along the CST. These findings indicate homogeneous genetic factors within each cluster and regional variability in genetic influences across clusters. Our source code is available at https://github.com/USC-LoBeS/MeTA .