Behavioral, Anatomical and Heritable Convergence of Affect and Cognition in Superior Frontal Cortex
Nevena Kraljević,
H. Lina Schaare,
Simon B. Eickhoff,
Peter Kochunov,
B.T. Thomas Yeo,
Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh,
Sofie L. Valk
Affiliations
Nevena Kraljević
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7: Brain and Behaviour), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
H. Lina Schaare
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7: Brain and Behaviour), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Otto Hahn group Cognitive Neurogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstr. 1A, Leipzig 04103, Germany; Corresponding authors at: Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7: Brain and Behaviour), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
Simon B. Eickhoff
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7: Brain and Behaviour), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Peter Kochunov
Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
B.T. Thomas Yeo
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Centre for Sleep and Cognition, Centre for Translational MR Research, N.1 Institute for Health and Institute for Digital Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA; NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7: Brain and Behaviour), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Sofie L. Valk
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7: Brain and Behaviour), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; Otto Hahn group Cognitive Neurogenetics, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstr. 1A, Leipzig 04103, Germany; Corresponding authors at: Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-7: Brain and Behaviour), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
Cognitive abilities and affective experience are key human traits that are interrelated in behavior and brain. Individual variation of cognitive and affective traits, as well as brain structure, has been shown to partly underlie genetic effects. However, to what extent affect and cognition have a shared genetic relationship with local brain structure is incompletely understood. Here we studied phenotypic and genetic correlations of cognitive and affective traits in behavior and brain structure (cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volumes) in the pedigree-based Human Connectome Project sample (N = 1091). Both cognitive and affective trait scores were highly heritable and showed significant phenotypic correlation on the behavioral level. Cortical thickness in the left superior frontal cortex showed a phenotypic association with both affect and cognition. Decomposing the phenotypic correlations into genetic and environmental components showed that the associations were accounted for by shared genetic effects between the traits. Quantitative functional decoding of the left superior frontal cortex further indicated that this region is associated with cognitive and emotional functioning. This study provides a multi-level approach to study the association between affect and cognition and suggests a convergence of both in superior frontal cortical thickness.
