Substantial SNP-based heritability estimates for working memory performance

Vogler, Christian; Gschwind, Leo; Coynel, David; Freytag, Virginie; Milnik, Annette; Egli, Tobias; Heck, Angela; Quervain, Dominique J.‐F. de; Papassotiropoulos, Andreas

doi:10.1038/tp.2014.81

Cited by 32 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(33 reference statements)

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“…Of note, this result represents a direct replication of the significant SNP‐heritability observed independently for N‐back performance in a cohort of healthy young adults [Vogler C et al, 2014]. Moreover, these findings are in agreement with reported heritability estimates of diverse cognitive abilities in children and adolescents using the same genetic approach [Benyamin B et al, 2013; Trzaskowski M et al, 2013; Roninson EB et al, 2014], supporting the contribution of multiple common variants to neurocognitive functioning.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Common genetic variation and schizophrenia polygenic risk influence neurocognitive performance in young adulthood

Hatzimanolis

Bhatnagar

Moes

et al. 2015

American J of Med Genetics Pt B

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Neurocognitive abilities constitute complex traits with considerable heritability. Impaired neurocognition is typically observed in schizophrenia (SZ), whereas convergent evidence has shown shared genetic determinants between neurocognition and SZ. Here, we report a genome‐wide association study (GWAS) on neuropsychological and oculomotor traits, linked to SZ, in a general population sample of healthy young males (n = 1079). Follow‐up genotyping was performed in an identically phenotyped internal sample (n = 738) and an independent cohort of young males with comparable neuropsychological measures (n = 825). Heritability estimates were determined based on genome‐wide single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and potential regulatory effects on gene expression were assessed in human brain. Correlations with general cognitive ability and SZ risk polygenic scores were tested utilizing meta‐analysis GWAS results by the Cognitive Genomics Consortium (COGENT) and the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC‐SZ). The GWAS results implicated biologically relevant genetic loci encoding protein targets involved in synaptic neurotransmission, although no robust individual replication was detected and thus additional validation is required. Secondary permutation‐based analysis revealed an excess of strongly associated loci among GWAS top‐ranked signals for verbal working memory (WM) and antisaccade intra‐subject reaction time variability (empirical P < 0.001), suggesting multiple true‐positive single‐SNP associations. Substantial heritability was observed for WM performance. Further, sustained attention/vigilance and WM were suggestively correlated with both COGENT and PGC‐SZ derived polygenic scores. Overall, these results imply that common genetic variation explains some of the variability in neurocognitive functioning among young adults, particularly WM, and provide supportive evidence that increased SZ genetic risk predicts neurocognitive fluctuations in the general population. © 2015 The Authors American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 64%

Common genetic variation and schizophrenia polygenic risk influence neurocognitive performance in young adulthood

Hatzimanolis

Bhatnagar

Moes

et al. 2015

American J of Med Genetics Pt B

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“…Although certain plastic adjustment of these memory parameters on the basis of the learner's individual experience cannot be ruled out, it is unlikely that adaptation to language learning and use over hundreds of generations did not also play a role in shaping the genetic basis of these parameters' values. This claim is supported by the known genetic heritability component in various types of memory (60)(61)(62)(63). The question to address next is how these parameters evolved as a result of language evolution.…”

Section: The Case Of Human Language and Memory Constraintsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The authors suggest that language has evolved to cope with this memory limitation, but that the evolution of this memory limitation was not affected by language. As we noted elsewhere (59), this assumption runs counter to the evolutionary argument above and to substantial evidence for genetic variance in memory parameters (60)(61)(62)(63). In a reply to this criticism, Chater and Christiansen (64) explained that the memory bottleneck cannot be viewed as a genetically variable trait that can respond freely to selection because it "emerges from the computational architecture of the brain."…”

mentioning

confidence: 94%

The evolution of cognitive mechanisms in response to cultural innovations

Lotem

Halpern

Edelman

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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When humans and other animals make cultural innovations, they also change their environment, thereby imposing new selective pressures that can modify their biological traits. For example, there is evidence that dairy farming by humans favored alleles for adult lactose tolerance. Similarly, the invention of cooking possibly affected the evolution of jaw and tooth morphology. However, when it comes to cognitive traits and learning mechanisms, it is much more difficult to determine whether and how their evolution was affected by culture or by their use in cultural transmission. Here we argue that, excluding very recent cultural innovations, the assumption that culture shaped the evolution of cognition is both more parsimonious and more productive than assuming the opposite. In considering how culture shapes cognition, we suggest that a process-level model of cognitive evolution is necessary and offer such a model. The model employs relatively simple coevolving mechanisms of learning and data acquisition that jointly construct a complex network of a type previously shown to be capable of supporting a range of cognitive abilities. The evolution of cognition, and thus the effect of culture on cognitive evolution, is captured through small modifications of these coevolving learning and data-acquisition mechanisms, whose coordinated action is critical for building an effective network. We use the model to show how these mechanisms are likely to evolve in response to cultural phenomena, such as language and tool-making, which are associated with major changes in data patterns and with new computational and statistical challenges.tool-making | language evolution | niche construction | cognitive evolution | social learning A n open question in the study of culture and cognitive evolution is whether (and to what extent) cognitive mechanisms, especially those viewed as advanced or sophisticated, evolved in response to social-learning challenges or are merely the product of domain-general mechanisms (1-3). According to one view-still widely held in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology-cognitive adaptations take the form of specialized brain modules (or neuronal mechanisms) that evolved for specific, often social purposes, such as "imitation" (4, 5), "mind reading" (6, 7), "cheating detection" (8), or most famously, language acquisition (9, 10). These ideas have been criticized on theoretical and empirical grounds (11,12), and the debate around them demonstrates our limited understanding of the evolution of cognition, its relationship to the evolution of social behavior and, in some organisms, culture.The question of whether culture and social behavior shape the evolution of the brain is, in our view, best considered using the evolutionary framework of niche construction (13-16): that is, culture and social behavior change the ecological niche to which cognitive traits must adapt in the same manner that nest-building by birds changes the ecological niche in which their nestlings evolve. For example, animals' ability t...

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“…Heritability estimates based on single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for cognitive measures range between 31% and 51%, indicating substantial heritability for behavioral measures [11,12].…”

Section: Glossarymentioning

confidence: 99%