Carol E. Franz

TL;DR: The hypothesis that Common EF captures similar EF abilities in midlife as in adolescence and young adulthood is supported, however, environmental influences may explain a larger portion of variance in this construct as individuals age.

TL;DR: Multivariate twin models were applied to data from late-middle-aged participants in the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging to examine the genetic architecture of 6 measures from 3 standard neuropsychological tests, and the best-fitting model was a higher order common pathways model with a heritable higher order general episodic memory factor and three test-specific subfactors.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that like cortical thickness, WM/GM contrast is a genetically influenced brain structure phenotype, and the lack of significant genetic correlations with cortical thickness suggests that this measure potentially represents a unique source of genetic variance, one that has yet to be explored by the field of imaging genetics.

TL;DR: Results suggest that genetic effects play an important role in the level of hearing loss that often appears in late middle age, and have important implications for identifying persons who may be especially vulnerable to environmental risk factors such as noise exposure and medications with ototoxic properties.

TL;DR: Investigation of demographic, cognitive, symptom, and functional capacity predictors of current functional status in 280 outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder found increased assessment and treatment of comorbid depressive symptoms may improve functional outcomes in people with schizophrenia.