Genetic expression of specific physical traits correlates with behavioral phenotypes
Extensive genomic and neuroimaging research consistently demonstrates that genetic variation in brain structure and specific genetic loci correlate significantly with cognitive, psychological, and behavioral phenotypes.
Multiple large-scale GWAS meta-analyses and genetic studies across humans and animal models consistently report significant genetic correlations and shared loci between physical/neuroanatomical traits (such as cortical structure or brain-expressed genes) and behavioral phenotypes (such as cognition, antisocial behavior, and anxiety).
K. Grasby, N. Jahanshad, J. Painter, L. Colodro-Conde, J. Bralten, D. Hibar, P. Lind, F. Pizzagalli, C. Ching, M. McMahon, N. Shatokhina, L. Zsembik, I. Agartz, S. Alhusaini, M. Almeida, D. Alnæs, I. Amlien, M. Andersson, T. Ard, N. Armstrong, A. Ashley-Koch, M. Bernard, R. Brouwer, Elizabeth E. L. Buimer, R. Bülow, C. Bürger, D. Cannon, M. Chakravarty, Qiang Chen, J. Cheung, B. Couvy-Duchesne, A. Dale, S. Dalvie, T. K. de Araujo, G. D. de Zubicaray, S. D. de Zwarte, A. Braber, N. T. Doan, K. Dohm, S. Ehrlich, Hannah-Ruth Engelbrecht, S. Erk, C. Fan, I. Fedko, S. Foley, J. Ford, M. Fukunaga, M. Garrett, T. Ge, S. Giddaluru, A. Goldman, N. Groenewold, D. Grotegerd, T. Gurholt, Boris Gutman, N. Hansell, M. Harris, Marc Harrison, C. Haswell, M. Hauser, D. Heslenfeld, D. Hoehn, L. Holleran, M. Hoogman, J. Hottenga, M. Ikeda, Deborah Janowitz, I. Jansen, T. Jia, C. Jockwitz, R. Kanai, S. Karama, Dalia Kasperavičiūtė, T. Kaufmann, S. Kelly, M. Kikuchi, M. Klein, M. Knapp, A. Knodt, B. Krämer, T. Lancaster, Phil H. Lee, T. Lett, Lindsay B. Lewis, Í. Lopes-Cendes, M. Luciano, F. Macciardi, A. Marquand, S. Mathias, T. Melzer, Y. Milaneschi, Nazanin Mirza-Schreiber, J. Moreira, Thomas W. Mühleisen, B. Müller-Myhsok, P. Najt, Soichiro Nakahara, K. Nho, Loes M. Olde Loohuis, D. Orfanos, J. Pearson, Toni L. Pitcher, B. Pütz, A. Ragothaman, Faisal M. Rashid, R. Redlich, C. Reinbold, J. Repple, Geneviève Richard, Brandalyn C. Riedel, S. Risacher, C. Rocha, N. R. Mota, Lauren E. Salminen, A. Saremi, A. Saykin, Fenja Schlag, L. Schmaal, P. Schofield, R. Secolin, Chin Yang Shapland, Li Shen, Jean Shin, E. Shumskaya, I. Sønderby, E. Sprooten, Lachlan T. Strike, K. Tansey, A. Teumer, A. Thalamuthu, S. Thomopoulos, D. Tordesillas-Gutiérrez, J. Turner, A. Uhlmann, C. Vallerga, Dennis van der Meer, M. V. van Donkelaar, L. V. Eijk, T. V. van Erp, N. V. van Haren, D. Rooij, M. van Tol, J. Veldink, Ellen Verhoef, E. Walton, Yunpeng Wang, J. Wardlaw, W. Wen, L. Westlye, C. Whelan, S. Witt, K. Wittfeld, C. Wolf, T. Wolfers, Clarissa Yasuda, D. Zaremba, Zuo Zhang, A. Zhu, M. Zwiers, E. Artiges, Amelia A. Assareh, R. Ayesa‐Arriola, A. Belger, C. L. Brandt, Gregory G. Brown, S. Cichon, J. Curran, G. Davies, F. Degenhardt, B. Dietsche, S. Djurovic, C. Doherty, R. Espiritu, D. Garijo, Y. Gil, P. Gowland, R. Green, A. Häusler, W. Heindel, B. Ho, W. Hoffmann, F. Holsboer, G. Homuth, N. Hosten, C. Jack, Mihyun Jang, A. Jansen, Knut K. Kolskår, S. Koops, A. Krug, K. Lim, J. Luykx, D. Mathalon, K. Mather, V. Mattay, Sarah M. Matthews, Jaqueline Mayoral Van Son, S. McEwen, I. Melle, D. Morris, B. Mueller, M. Nauck, J. Nordvik, M. Nöthen, D. O'Leary, N. Opel, M. Paillère Martinot, G. Pike, Adrian Preda, E. Quinlan, V. Ratnakar, S. Reppermund, V. Steen, F. Torres, D. Veltman, J. Voyvodic, R. Whelan, T. White, H. Yamamori, H. Adams, J. Bis, S. Debette, C. Decarli, M. Fornage, V. Gudnason, E. Hofer, M. Ikram, L. Launer, W. Longstreth, O. Lopez, B. Mazoyer, T. Mosley, G. Roshchupkin, C. Satizabal, R. Schmidt, S. Seshadri, Qiong Yang, M. Alvim, D. Ames, T. Anderson, O. Andreassen, A. Arias-Vásquez, M. Bastin, B. Baune, J. Blangero, D. Boomsma, H. Brodaty, H. Brunner, R. Buckner, J. Buitelaar, J. Bustillo, W. Cahn, V. Calhoun, X. Caseras, S. Caspers, G. Cavalleri, F. Cendes, B. Crespo-Facorro, J. Dalrymple-Alford, U. Dannlowski, E. D. de Geus, I. Deary, C. Depondt, S. Desrivières, G. Donohoe, T. Espeseth, G. Fernández, S. Fisher, H. Flor, A. Forstner, C. Francks, B. Franke, D. Glahn, R. Gollub, H. Grabe, O. Gruber, A. Håberg, A. Hariri, C. Hartman, R. Hashimoto, A. Heinz, M. Hillegers, P. Hoekstra, A. Holmes, L. Hong, W. Hopkins, H. H. Hulshoff Pol, T. Jernigan, E. Jönsson, R. Kahn, M. Kennedy, T. Kircher, P. Kochunov, J. Kwok, S. Hellard, N. Martin, J. Martinot, C. Mcdonald, K. Mcmahon, A. Meyer-Lindenberg, R. Morey, L. Nyberg, J. Oosterlaan, R. Ophoff, T. Paus, Z. Pausova, B. Penninx, T. Polderman, D. Posthuma, M. Rietschel, J. Roffman, L. Rowland, P. Sachdev, P. Sämann, G. Schumann, K. Sim, S. Sisodiya, J. Smoller, I. Sommer, B. S. Pourcain, D. Stein, A. Toga, J. Trollor, Nic J. A. der Wee, Dennis van ’t Ent, H. Völzke, H. Walter, B. Weber, D. Weinberger, M. Wright, J. Zhou, J. Stein, P. Thompson, S. Medland. The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay6690
Grasby et al. (2020) identify common genetic variants associated with human cortical structure that correlate significantly with cognitive, psychological, and behavioral phenotypes.
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Joanna Martin, E. Khramtsova, S. Goleva, G. Blokland, M. Traglia, R. Walters, Christopher Hübel, J. Coleman, G. Breen, A. Børglum, D. Demontis, J. Grove, T. Werge, J. Bralten, C. Bulik, Phil H. Lee, C. Mathews, Roseann E. Peterson, S. Winham, N. Wray, H. Edenberg, Wei Guo, Yin Yao, B. Neale, S. Faraone, T. Petryshen, L. Weiss, L. Duncan, J. Goldstein, J. Smoller, Barbara E. Stranger, L. Davis. Examining Sex-Differentiated Genetic Effects Across Neuropsychiatric and Behavioral Traits. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2020.12.024
Examining sex-differentiated genetic architecture across 20 traits, this study demonstrates overlapping genetic effects between specific gene sets and neuropsychiatric and behavioral phenotypes (Rust et al., 2020).
J. Tielbeek, E. Uffelmann, Benjamin S. Williams, L. Colodro-Conde, É. Gagnon, T. Mallard, Br Levitt, P. Jansen, Ada Johansson, H. Sallis, G. Pistis, G. Saunders, A. Allegrini, Kaili Rimfeld, B. Konte, M. Klein, A. Hartmann, J. Salvatore, I. Nolte, D. Demontis, A. Malmberg, S. A. Burt, J. Savage, K. Sugden, R. Poulton, K. Harris, S. Vrieze, M. McGue, W. Iacono, N. R. Mota, J. Mill, Joana Viana, B. Mitchell, J. Morosoli, Till F. M. Andlauer, Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, R. Tremblay, S. Côté, Jean‐Philippe Gouin, M. Brendgen, G. Dionne, F. Vitaro, M. Lupton, N. Martin, E. Castelao, K. Räikkönen, J. Eriksson, J. Lahti, C. Hartman, A. Oldehinkel, H. Snieder, Hexuan Liu, M. Preisig, A. Whipp, E. Vuoksimaa, Yi Lu, P. Jern, D. Rujescu, I. Giegling, T. Palviainen, J. Kaprio, K. Harden, M. Munafo, Geneviève Morneau-Vaillancourt, R. Plomin, E. Viding, B. Boutwell, F. Aliev, D. Dick, A. Popma, S. Faraone, A. Børglum, S. Medland, B. Franke, M. Boivin, J. Pingault, J. Glennon, J. C. Barnes, S. Fisher, T. Moffitt, A. Caspi, T. Polderman, D. Posthuma. Uncovering the genetic architecture of broad antisocial behavior through a genome-wide association study meta-analysis. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.10.19.462578
The Broad Antisocial Behavior Consortium (2021) identifies intronic genetic variants associated with broad antisocial behavior that show substantial genetic correlations with cognitive and mental health phenotypes.
Gitanjali E. Gnanadesikan, Brian Hare, Noah Snyder-Mackler, J. Call, Juliane Kaminski, Á. Miklósi, E. MacLean. Breed differences in dog cognition associated with brain-expressed genes and neurological functions.. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icaa112
Combining behavioral phenotypes with genomic data in dogs, Morrill et al. (2020) find that specific genetic polymorphisms and brain-expressed genes are associated with breed differences in cognition and behavior.
Martone A, Folego-Temoteo I, Fries GR, Docherty AR, Ashley-Koch AE, Bandeira CE, Grevet EH, Bau CHD, Bralten J, Fabbri C, Serretti A, Fanelli G, Rovaris DL. Dissecting the pleiotropic genetic architecture of suicide attempt, suicidal ideation, and thirteen correlated traits.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2026.112821
Dissecting the genetic architecture of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, this study maps shared genetic loci to specific neurodevelopmental, cognitive, and behavioral phenotypes (2026).
Chitre AS, Hebda-Bauer EK, Emery MA, Li F, Nguyen KM, Wang Y, Cheng R, Polesskaya O, Watson SJ Jr, Li J, Akil H, Palmer AA. Genetic Architecture of Addiction-Relevant Behaviors in Outbred Sprague-Dawley Rats Reveals Loci for Anxiety-Like and Nociceptive Traits.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1111/gbb.70053
Analyzing outbred rats, this study successfully links specific genetic loci and candidate genes to behavioral phenotypes such as anxiety-like and nociceptive traits (2026).
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