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Examining Associations between Brain Function, Language Ability, and Educational Attainment Polygenic Score
Poster Session C, Friday, October 25, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Great Hall 3 and 4
Lachlan Strike1, Brittany Mitchell1, Katie McMahon2, Sarah Medland1, Greig de Zubicaray2; 1QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, 2Queensland University of Technology
INTRODUCTION: The interplay between genetic influence and language ability during adolescence represents a pivotal area of research with profound implications for educational strategies. While recent work has shown associations between a polygenic score for educational attainment (a proxy for cognitive ability) and the surface area of language regions, associations with measures of intrinsic brain function remain unexplored. This study aims to elucidate associations among brain function, language ability, and educational attainment polygenic scores (EA-PGS) in a cohort of adolescents. METHODS: Participants were drawn from the Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain (QTAB) longitudinal brain development study. Here, we use data from both acquisition waves (358 wave 1 participants, 9-14 years, 51% female; 258 wave 2 participants, 10-16 years, 55% female). Applying the DPARSF toolbox to 10-minute resting-state functional MRI scans acquired at each wave, we derived measures of Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuations (ALFF) and Regional Homogeneity (ReHo) intrinsic brain function for 68 language regions of interest (ROI) from the Brainnetome Atlas. Language ability was assessed at both waves using the Crystalized Composite score from the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (derived from the Picture Vocabulary and Oral Reading Recognition tests). An EA-PGS was created for each participant using publicly available data. Associations between Crystalized Composite score and ReHo/ALFF measures were examined using linear mixed-effects models specifying fixed effects of age, sex, handedness, head motion, and random effects of family and zygosity (to control for participant relatedness) and participant (to control for repeat measurements). Associations between EA-PGS and 1) ReHo/ALFF measures (only for ROIs significantly associated with Crystalized Composite score) and 2) Crystalized Composite score were additionally examined. Ancestry principal components and socioeconomic status were included as fixed effects for EA-PGS analyses. RESULTS: Following multiple testing correction (Holm–Bonferroni), there was a positive association between mean ReHo of the left inferior frontal gyrus rostral area 45 (L A45r) and Crystalized Composite score (p = 1.14 × 10-4). This association remained significant when including the NIH Toolbox Pattern Comparison Processing Speed score as a non-language cognitive covariate. The EA-PGS was positively associated with mean ReHo of the L A45r ROI (p = .02) and the Crystalized Composite score (p = 3.99 x 10-8), explaining 1% and 4% of the variance in these traits, respectively. However, the mediating effect of L A45r ReHo on the relationship between EA-PGS and Crystalized Composite score did not reach significance. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest a region-specific association between language ability and intrinsic brain activity during adolescence. However, studies in larger samples are required to establish whether genetic influences underlie this association.
Topic Areas: Genetics,