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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic

TLDR
A genome-wide analysis of unrelated adults with data on single nucleotide polymorphisms and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits unequivocally confirms that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation, and is consistent with many genes of small effects underlying the additive genetic influences on intelligence.
Abstract
General intelligence is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities. Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial. We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549692 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits. We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants. These estimates provide lower bounds for the narrow-sense heritability of the traits. We partitioned genetic variation on individual chromosomes and found that, on average, longer chromosomes explain more variation. Finally, using just SNP data we predicted B1% of the variance of crystallized and fluid cognitive phenotypes in an independent sample (P=0.009 and 0.028, respectively). Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation, and are consistent with many genes of small effects underlying the additive genetic influences on intelligence. Molecular Psychiatry advance online publication, 9 August 2011; doi:10.1038/mp.2011.85

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Human cognitive abilities: A survey of factor analytic studies

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Rare and common variants: twenty arguments

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Genetic Architectures of Psychiatric Disorders: The Emerging Picture and Its Implications

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The ENIGMA Consortium: large-scale collaborative analyses of neuroimaging and genetic data

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI

PLINK: A Tool Set for Whole-Genome Association and Population-Based Linkage Analyses

TL;DR: This work introduces PLINK, an open-source C/C++ WGAS tool set, and describes the five main domains of function: data management, summary statistics, population stratification, association analysis, and identity-by-descent estimation, which focuses on the estimation and use of identity- by-state and identity/descent information in the context of population-based whole-genome studies.
Journal ArticleDOI

GCTA: a tool for genome-wide complex trait analysis.

TL;DR: The GCTA software is a versatile tool to estimate and partition complex trait variation with large GWAS data sets and focuses on the function of estimating the variance explained by all the SNPs on the X chromosome and testing the hypotheses of dosage compensation.
Book

Manual for Raven's progressive matrices and vocabulary scales

TL;DR: The item-banked version of Raven's APM delivers a set of 23 matrices randomly selected from a recommend RAVEN'S Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM). Manual.
Journal ArticleDOI

Common polygenic variation contributes to risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Shaun Purcell, +81 more
- 06 Aug 2009 - 
TL;DR: The extent to which common genetic variation underlies the risk of schizophrenia is shown, using two analytic approaches, and the major histocompatibility complex is implicate, which is shown to involve thousands of common alleles of very small effect.
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Common polygenic variation contributes to risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder

Shaun Purcell, +81 more
- 06 Aug 2009 - 
Trending Questions (3)
What do twin and family studies say about intelligence?

Twin and family studies suggest that intelligence has a high heritability, with genetic factors accounting for a significant portion of individual differences in cognitive abilities.

How heritable is IQ?

Human intelligence, including IQ, is highly heritable, with estimates suggesting that around 40% to 51% of the variation in intelligence is due to genetic factors.

What is the heritability of IQ?

The heritability of IQ is estimated to be 40% for crystallized-type intelligence and 51% for fluid-type intelligence, according to the provided paper.