Estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the Human Connectome Project dataset.

The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a large structural and functional MRI dataset with a rich array of behavioral and genotypic measures, as well as a biologically verified family structure. This makes it a valuable resource for investigating questions about individual differences, including quest...

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Main Authors: Yanting Han, Ralph Adolphs
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2020-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235860
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author Yanting Han
Ralph Adolphs
author_facet Yanting Han
Ralph Adolphs
author_sort Yanting Han
collection DOAJ
description The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a large structural and functional MRI dataset with a rich array of behavioral and genotypic measures, as well as a biologically verified family structure. This makes it a valuable resource for investigating questions about individual differences, including questions about heritability. While its MRI data have been analyzed extensively in this regard, to our knowledge a comprehensive estimation of the heritability of the behavioral dataset has never been conducted. Using a set of behavioral measures of personality, emotion and cognition, we show that it is possible to re-identify the same individual across two testing times (fingerprinting), and to identify identical twins significantly above chance. Standard heritability estimates of 37 behavioral measures were derived from twin correlations, and machine-learning models (univariate linear model, Ridge classifier and Random Forest model) were trained to classify monozygotic twins and dizygotic twins. Correlations between the standard heritability metric and each set of model weights ranged from 0.36 to 0.7, and questionnaire-based and task-based measures did not differ significantly in their heritability. We further explored the heritability of a smaller number of latent factors extracted from the 37 measures and repeated the heritability estimation; in this case, the correlations between the standard heritability and each set of model weights were lower, ranging from 0.05 to 0.43. One specific discrepancy arose for the general intelligence factor, which all models assigned high importance, but the standard heritability calculation did not. We present a thorough investigation of the heritabilities of the behavioral measures in the HCP as a resource for other investigators, and illustrate the utility of machine-learning methods for qualitative characterization of the differential heritability across diverse measures.
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spelling doaj.art-461953d3346e49498d40467bdca8c9522022-12-21T19:18:08ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032020-01-01157e023586010.1371/journal.pone.0235860Estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the Human Connectome Project dataset.Yanting HanRalph AdolphsThe Human Connectome Project (HCP) is a large structural and functional MRI dataset with a rich array of behavioral and genotypic measures, as well as a biologically verified family structure. This makes it a valuable resource for investigating questions about individual differences, including questions about heritability. While its MRI data have been analyzed extensively in this regard, to our knowledge a comprehensive estimation of the heritability of the behavioral dataset has never been conducted. Using a set of behavioral measures of personality, emotion and cognition, we show that it is possible to re-identify the same individual across two testing times (fingerprinting), and to identify identical twins significantly above chance. Standard heritability estimates of 37 behavioral measures were derived from twin correlations, and machine-learning models (univariate linear model, Ridge classifier and Random Forest model) were trained to classify monozygotic twins and dizygotic twins. Correlations between the standard heritability metric and each set of model weights ranged from 0.36 to 0.7, and questionnaire-based and task-based measures did not differ significantly in their heritability. We further explored the heritability of a smaller number of latent factors extracted from the 37 measures and repeated the heritability estimation; in this case, the correlations between the standard heritability and each set of model weights were lower, ranging from 0.05 to 0.43. One specific discrepancy arose for the general intelligence factor, which all models assigned high importance, but the standard heritability calculation did not. We present a thorough investigation of the heritabilities of the behavioral measures in the HCP as a resource for other investigators, and illustrate the utility of machine-learning methods for qualitative characterization of the differential heritability across diverse measures.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235860
spellingShingle Yanting Han
Ralph Adolphs
Estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the Human Connectome Project dataset.
PLoS ONE
title Estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the Human Connectome Project dataset.
title_full Estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the Human Connectome Project dataset.
title_fullStr Estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the Human Connectome Project dataset.
title_full_unstemmed Estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the Human Connectome Project dataset.
title_short Estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the Human Connectome Project dataset.
title_sort estimating the heritability of psychological measures in the human connectome project dataset
url https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235860
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