Multivariate genetic analysis of personality and cognitive traits reveals abundant pleiotropy

Guy Hindley (), Alexey A. Shadrin (), Dennis Meer, Nadine Parker, Weiqiu Cheng, Kevin S. O’Connell, Shahram Bahrami, Aihua Lin, Naz Karadag, Børge Holen, Thomas Bjella, Ian J. Deary, Gail Davies, W. David Hill, Jan Bressler, Sudha Seshadri, Chun Chieh Fan, Torill Ueland, Srdjan Djurovic, Olav B. Smeland, Oleksandr Frei, Anders M. Dale and Ole A. Andreassen ()
Additional contact information
Guy Hindley: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Alexey A. Shadrin: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Dennis Meer: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Nadine Parker: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Weiqiu Cheng: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Kevin S. O’Connell: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Shahram Bahrami: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Aihua Lin: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Naz Karadag: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Børge Holen: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Thomas Bjella: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Ian J. Deary: University of Edinburgh
Gail Davies: University of Edinburgh
W. David Hill: University of Edinburgh
Jan Bressler: University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Sudha Seshadri: University of Texas Health Sciences Center
Chun Chieh Fan: University of California San Diego
Torill Ueland: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Srdjan Djurovic: University of Oslo
Olav B. Smeland: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Oleksandr Frei: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital
Anders M. Dale: University of California San Diego
Ole A. Andreassen: University of Oslo and Division of Mental Health and Addiction, Oslo University Hospital

Nature Human Behaviour, 2023, vol. 7, issue 9, 1584-1600

Abstract: Abstract Personality and cognitive function are heritable mental traits whose genetic foundations may be distributed across interconnected brain functions. Previous studies have typically treated these complex mental traits as distinct constructs. We applied the ‘pleiotropy-informed’ multivariate omnibus statistical test to genome-wide association studies of 35 measures of neuroticism and cognitive function from the UK Biobank (n = 336,993). We identified 431 significantly associated genetic loci with evidence of abundant shared genetic associations, across personality and cognitive function domains. Functional characterization implicated genes with significant tissue-specific expression in all tested brain tissues and brain-specific gene sets. We conditioned independent genome-wide association studies of the Big 5 personality traits and cognitive function on our multivariate findings, boosting genetic discovery in other personality traits and improving polygenic prediction. These findings advance our understanding of the polygenic architecture of these complex mental traits, indicating a prominence of pleiotropic genetic effects across higher order domains of mental function such as personality and cognitive function.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01630-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:7:y:2023:i:9:d:10.1038_s41562-023-01630-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01630-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().