Transcriptome-informed brain cartography of polygenic risk and association with brain structure in major psychiatric disorders - PubMed
4 days ago
- #brain transcriptomics
- #polygenic risk
- #psychiatric disorders
- Introduces a novel imaging-transcriptomics framework integrating transcriptome-wide association studies (TWAS) with brain transcriptomic atlases.
- Aims to predict macroscale structural brain abnormalities across seven psychiatric disorders: ADHD, ASD, AN, BD, MDD, OCD, and SCZ.
- Generates Gene Expression-based Disorder Associated Risk (GEDAR) maps to assess spatial correlation with observed brain alterations.
- Finds significant transcriptomic-anatomical correlations in MDD (cortical and subcortical), SCZ (subcortical), and ADHD (subcortical).
- Reveals immune-related processes as dominant in MDD and SCZ, and neurodevelopmental pathways in ADHD through pathway enrichment analysis.
- Notes that spatial transcriptomic-anatomical alignment does not scale with between-disorder differences in heritability, suggesting additional influences like developmental timing or environmental interactions.
- Highlights the potential and limitations of imaging transcriptomics in bridging genetic architecture and systems-level brain changes in psychiatric disorders.