Heritability of head motion during resting state functional MRI in 462 healthy twins

Baptiste Couvy-Duchesne, Gabriëlla A.M. Blokland, Ian B. Hickie, Paul M. Thompson, Nicholas G. Martin, Greig I. de Zubicaray, Katie L. McMahon, Margaret J. Wright

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

52 Scopus citations

Abstract

Head motion (HM) is a critical confounding factor in functional MRI. Here we investigate whether HM during resting state functional MRI (RS-fMRI) is influenced by genetic factors in a sample of 462 twins (65% fema≤ 101 MZ (monozygotic) and 130 DZ (dizygotic) twin pairs; mean age: 21 (SD=3.16), range 16-29). Heritability estimates for three HM components-mean translation (MT), maximum translation (MAXT) and mean rotation (MR)-ranged from 37 to 51%. We detected a significant common genetic influence on HM variability, with about two-thirds (genetic correlations range 0.76-1.00) of the variance shared between MR, MT and MAXT. A composite metric (HM-PC1), which aggregated these three, was also moderately heritable (h2=42%). Using a sub-sample (N=35) of the twins we confirmed that mean and maximum translational and rotational motions were consistent "traits" over repeated scans (r=0.53-0.59); reliability was even higher for the composite metric (r=0.66). In addition, phenotypic and cross-trait cross-twin correlations between HM and resting state functional connectivities (RS-FCs) with Brodmann areas (BA) 44 and 45, in which RS-FCs were found to be moderately heritable (BA44: h2-=0.23 (sd=0.041), BA45: h2-=0.26 (sd=0.061)), indicated that HM might not represent a major bias in genetic studies using FCs. Even so, the HM effect on FC was not completely eliminated after regression. HM may be a valuable endophenotype whose relationship with brain disorders remains to be elucidated.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)424-434
Number of pages11
JournalNeuroImage
Volume102
Issue numberP2
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Nov 2014
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Broca's area
  • Head motion
  • Heritability
  • Resting state fMRI
  • Twin study

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