Shared genetic aetiology between cognitive performance and brain activations in language and math tasks

International audienceCognitive performance is highly heritable. However, little is known about common genetic infuenceson cognitive ability and brain activation when engaged in a cognitive task. The Human ConnectomeProject (HCP) ofers a unique opportunity to study this shared genetic etiology with an extendedpedigree of 785 individuals. To investigate this common genetic origin, we took advantage of the HCPdataset, which includes both language and mathematics activation tasks. Using the HCP multimodalparcellation, we identifed areals in which inter-individual functional MRI (fMRI) activation variance wassignifcantly explained by genetics. Then, we performed bivariate genetic analyses between the neuralactivations and behavioral scores, corresponding to the fMRI task accuracies, fuid intelligence, workingmemory and language performance. We observed that several parts of the language network along thesuperior temporal sulcus, as well as the angular gyrus belonging to the math processing network, aresignifcantly genetically correlated with these indicators of cognitive performance. This shared geneticetiology provides insights into the brain areas where the human-specifc genetic repertoire is expressed.Studying the association of polygenic risk scores, using variants associated with human cognitive abilityand brain activation, would provide an opportunity to better understand where these variants areinfuenti