Genetic influences on composite neural activations supporting visual target identification

• Published in: Biological psychology 2013-02, Vol.92 (2), p.329-341
• Main Authors: Ethridge, Lauren E., Malone, Stephen M., Iacono, William G., Clementz, Brett A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Biometrics; Biometry; Brain - physiology; Brain Mapping; Electroencephalography; Evoked Potentials, Visual - genetics; Evoked Potentials, Visual - physiology; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Male; Models, Genetic; Photic Stimulation; Principal Component Analysis; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reaction Time - genetics; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Spatial PCA; Time-frequency EEG; Twin study; Twins, Dizygotic - genetics; Twins, Monozygotic - genetics; Visual oddball
• ISSN: 0301-0511; 1873-6246
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.11.016

► Heritable brain responses follow patterns associated with common frequency bands. ► Connection between biological mechanisms of brain oscillations and inheritance. ► Peaks in heritability do not necessarily correspond to peaks in EEG amplitude. ► Composite broad sense heritability as a guide for specific genetic modeling. ► Data reduction/integration methods may more accurately characterize gene effects. Behavior genetic studies of brain activity associated with complex cognitive operations may further elucidate the genetic and physiological underpinnings of basic and complex neural processing. In the present project, monozygotic (N=51 pairs) and dizygotic (N=48 pairs) twins performed a visual oddball task with dense-array EEG. Using spatial PCA, two principal components each were retained for targets and standards; wavelets were used to obtain time-frequency maps of eigenvalue-weighted event-related oscillations for each individual. Distribution of inter-trial phase coherence (ITC) and single trial power (STP) over time indicated that the early principal component was primarily associated with ITC while the later component was associated with a mixture of ITC and STP. Spatial PCA on point-by-point broad sense heritability matrices revealed data-derived frequency bands similar to those well established in EEG literature. Biometric models of eigenvalue-weighted time-frequency data suggest a link between physiology of oscillatory brain activity and patterns of genetic influence.