Department of Biomedical Engineering, Catholic University of Daegu, 13-13 Hayang-ro, Hayang-eup, Gyeongsan-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do 712-702, South Korea.
Neuroscience. 2012 Sep 18;220:169-78. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2012.06.030. Epub 2012 Jun 21.
Cortical surface area has been largely overlooked in genetic studies of human brain morphometry, even though phylogenetic differences in cortical surface area between individuals are known to be influenced by differences in genetic endowment. In this study, we examined the relative contribution of genetic and environmental influences on cortical surface areas in both the native and stereotaxic spaces for a cohort of homogeneously-aged healthy pediatric twins. Bilateral hemispheric surface and all lobar surface areas except the occipital lobes in native space showed high heritable estimates, while the common environmental effect on bilateral occipital lobes reached statistical significance. The proportion of genetic variance for cortical surface areas measured in stereotaxic space was lower than that measured in native space, whereas the unique environmental influences increased. This is reasonable since whole brain volume is also known to be heritable itself and so removing that component of areal variance due to overall brain size via stereotaxic transformation will reduce the genetic proportion. These findings further suggest that cortical surface areas involved in cognitive, attention and emotional processing, as well as in creating and retaining of long-term memories are likely to be more useful for examining the relationship between genotype and behavioral phenotypes.
皮质表面积在人类大脑形态计量学的遗传研究中基本上被忽视了，尽管众所周知，个体之间皮质表面积的系统发育差异受到遗传赋予的差异的影响。在这项研究中，我们检查了遗传和环境因素对同质年龄健康儿科双胞胎的皮质表面积的相对贡献，包括在原生空间和立体定向空间中的皮质表面积。双侧半球表面和除枕叶以外的所有脑叶表面区域在原生空间中表现出较高的遗传估计值，而双侧枕叶的共同环境效应达到了统计学意义。在立体定向空间中测量的皮质表面积的遗传方差比例低于在原生空间中测量的比例，而独特的环境影响增加了。这是合理的，因为众所周知，整个大脑体积本身也是可遗传的，因此通过立体定向转换去除由于整体大脑大小而导致的面积方差的那个成分将降低遗传比例。这些发现进一步表明，涉及认知、注意力和情绪处理以及长期记忆的创建和保留的皮质表面积可能更有助于检查基因型与行为表型之间的关系。
