Youn Cherry, Grotzinger Andrew D, Lill Christina M, Bertram Lars, Schmiedek Florian, Lövdén Martin, Lindenberger Ulman, Nivard Michel, Harden K Paige, Tucker-Drob Elliot M
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
Lübeck Interdisciplinary Platform for Genome Analytics, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany.
NPJ Sci Learn. 2022 May 4;7(1):7. doi: 10.1038/s41539-022-00121-2.
Cognitive performance is both heritable and sensitive to environmental inputs and sustained practice over time. However, it is currently unclear how genetic effects on cognitive performance change over the course of learning. We examine how polygenic scores (PGS) created from genome-wide association studies of educational attainment and cognitive performance are related to improvements in performance across nine cognitive tests (measuring perceptual speed, working memory, and episodic memory) administered to 131 adults (N = 51, ages = 20-31, and N = 80, ages = 65-80 years) repeatedly across 100 days. We observe that PGS associations with performance on a given task can change over the course of learning, with the specific pattern of change in associations differing across tasks. PGS correlations with pre-test to post-test scores may mask variability in how soon learning occurs over the course of practice. The associations between PGS and learning do not appear to simply reconstitute patterns of association between baseline performance and subsequent learning. Associations involving PGSs, however, were small with large confidence intervals. Intensive longitudinal research such as that described here may be of substantial value for clarifying the genetics of learning when implemented as far larger scale.
认知能力既具有遗传性，又对环境输入以及长期的持续练习敏感。然而，目前尚不清楚基因对认知能力的影响在学习过程中是如何变化的。我们研究了从教育程度和认知能力的全基因组关联研究中创建的多基因分数（PGS），与对131名成年人（N = 51，年龄 = 20 - 31岁，N = 80，年龄 = 65 - 80岁）在100天内重复进行的九项认知测试（测量感知速度、工作记忆和情景记忆）中的能力提升之间的关系。我们观察到，PGS与特定任务表现之间的关联在学习过程中可能会发生变化，且关联变化的具体模式因任务而异。PGS与测试前到测试后分数的相关性可能会掩盖在练习过程中学习发生的时间差异。PGS与学习之间的关联似乎并非简单地重构基线表现与后续学习之间的关联模式。然而，涉及PGS的关联较小，置信区间较大。像这里所描述的密集纵向研究，如果以更大规模实施，可能对于阐明学习的遗传学具有重要价值。
