TY - JOUR
T1 - Structural brain imaging correlates of general intelligence in UK Biobank
AU - Cox, S. R.
AU - Ritchie, S. J.
AU - Fawns-Ritchie, C.
AU - Tucker-Drob, E. M.
AU - Deary, I. J.
N1 - This research was conducted, using the UK Biobank Resource under approved project 10279, in The University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology (CCACE) ( http://www.ccace.ed.ac.uk ), part of the cross-council Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Initiative (MR/K026992/1). Funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Medical Research Council (MRC) is gratefully acknowledged. SRC and IJD were supported by MRC grants MR/M013111/1 and MR/R024065/1 . IJD is additionally supported by the Dementias Platform UK ( MR/L015382/1 ), and he, SRC and SJR by the Age UK -funded Disconnected Mind project ( http://www.disconnectedmind.ed.ac.uk ). SRC, SJR, IJD and EMT-D were supported by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grant R01AG054628 . EMT-D was also supported by NIH research grant R01HD083613 , and is a member of the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin , which is supported by NIH center grant P2CHD042849 . CF-R is supported by Dementias Platform UK (DPUK), funded through the MRC ( MR/L023784/2 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Authors
PY - 2019/9
Y1 - 2019/9
N2 - The associations between indices of brain structure and measured intelligence are unclear. This is partly because the evidence to-date comes from mostly small and heterogeneous studies. Here, we report brain structure-intelligence associations on a large sample from the UK Biobank study. The overall N = 29,004, with N = 18,426 participants providing both brain MRI and at least one cognitive test, and a complete four-test battery with MRI data available in a minimum N = 7201, depending upon the MRI measure. Participants' age range was 44–81 years (M = 63.13, SD = 7.48). A general factor of intelligence (g) was derived from four varied cognitive tests, accounting for one third of the variance in the cognitive test scores. The association between (age- and sex- corrected) total brain volume and a latent factor of general intelligence is r = 0.276, 95% C.I. = [0.252, 0.300]. A model that incorporated multiple global measures of grey and white matter macro- and microstructure accounted for more than double the g variance in older participants compared to those in middle-age (13.6% and 5. 4%, respectively). There were no sex differences in the magnitude of associations between g and total brain volume or other global aspects of brain structure. The largest brain regional correlates of g were volumes of the insula, frontal, anterior/superior and medial temporal, posterior and paracingulate, lateral occipital cortices, thalamic volume, and the white matter microstructure of thalamic and association fibres, and of the forceps minor. Many of these regions exhibited unique contributions to intelligence, and showed highly stable out of sample prediction.
AB - The associations between indices of brain structure and measured intelligence are unclear. This is partly because the evidence to-date comes from mostly small and heterogeneous studies. Here, we report brain structure-intelligence associations on a large sample from the UK Biobank study. The overall N = 29,004, with N = 18,426 participants providing both brain MRI and at least one cognitive test, and a complete four-test battery with MRI data available in a minimum N = 7201, depending upon the MRI measure. Participants' age range was 44–81 years (M = 63.13, SD = 7.48). A general factor of intelligence (g) was derived from four varied cognitive tests, accounting for one third of the variance in the cognitive test scores. The association between (age- and sex- corrected) total brain volume and a latent factor of general intelligence is r = 0.276, 95% C.I. = [0.252, 0.300]. A model that incorporated multiple global measures of grey and white matter macro- and microstructure accounted for more than double the g variance in older participants compared to those in middle-age (13.6% and 5. 4%, respectively). There were no sex differences in the magnitude of associations between g and total brain volume or other global aspects of brain structure. The largest brain regional correlates of g were volumes of the insula, frontal, anterior/superior and medial temporal, posterior and paracingulate, lateral occipital cortices, thalamic volume, and the white matter microstructure of thalamic and association fibres, and of the forceps minor. Many of these regions exhibited unique contributions to intelligence, and showed highly stable out of sample prediction.
KW - Brain
KW - Cortex
KW - Intelligence
KW - Subcortical
KW - White matter
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85069615767&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.intell.2019.101376
DO - 10.1016/j.intell.2019.101376
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85069615767
SN - 0160-2896
VL - 76
JO - Intelligence
JF - Intelligence
M1 - 101376
ER -