Approved Research

Cognitive neuroimaging genomics to advance our understanding of brain function and its disorders

Lay summary

Aims: How do genetic and early life factors regulate brain circuits that underlie cognition (e.g., spatial navigation, memory, and language) in healthy aging and diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's disease)? This project aims to explore this question in humans, by combining various types of measures of individuals in a large-scale sample.

Rationale: In the proposed project, we plan to explicitly incorporate prior knowledge of brain networks underlying various cognitive functions (e.g., spatial navigation, memory, and language) into the integrative analysis of various data including cognition, brain imaging, early life experience, and genetic data. Genetic and life experience variables will be associated with functional networks in the human brain. The top genetic variants and early life factors revealed could provide candidates for further cognition and brain studies in healthy aging and diseases.

Project duration: The project will take 36 months.

Public health impact: The results would reveal new genetic variants and environmental factors associated with human cognition and brain networks in healthy aging and disease. We expect that this knowledge will be greatly helpful for future public health policy on diagnosis and treatment of diseases.