Genetic Epidemiology, Translational Neurogenomics, Psychiatric Genetics and Statistical Genetics Laboratories investigate the pattern of disease in families, particularly identical and non-identical twins, to assess the relative importance of genes and environment in a variety of important health problems.
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PMID
16184482
TITLE
Large, consistent estimates of the heritability of cognitive ability in two entire populations of 11-year-old twins from Scottish mental surveys of 1932 and 1947.
ABSTRACT
Twin studies provide estimates of genetic and environmental contributions to cognitive ability differences, but could be based on biased samples. Here we report whole-population estimates using twins from unique mental surveys in Scotland. The Scottish Mental Surveys of 1st June 1932 (SMS1932) and 4th June 1947 (SMS1947), respectively, administered the same validated verbal reasoning test to almost everyone born in 1921 or 1936 and attending school in Scotland. There were 572 twin pairs from the SMS1932, and 517 pairs from the SMS1947. Information on zygosity was unavailable. A novel application of a mixture distribution was used to estimate genetic and environmental components of verbal reasoning variation by maximum likelihood. We found consistent heritability (approximately 0.70) and shared environment (approximately 0.21) estimates. The estimates did not change substantially when additional quantitative traits (height and weight) were added in a multivariate analysis. More generally for studies in genetics, the methodological innovation developed here implies that large (national) data collections can provide sufficient information on twin pairs to estimate genetic parameters, even without zygosity.
DATE PUBLISHED
2005 Sep
HISTORY
PUBSTATUS PUBSTATUSDATE
received 2004/10/01
accepted 2005/02/16
pubmed 2005/09/27 09:00
medline 2006/01/24 09:00
entrez 2005/09/27 09:00
AUTHORS
NAME COLLECTIVENAME LASTNAME FORENAME INITIALS AFFILIATION AFFILIATIONINFO
Benyamin B Benyamin Beben B School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JT, UK.
Wilson V Wilson Valerie V
Whalley LJ Whalley Lawrence J LJ
Visscher PM Visscher Peter M PM
Deary IJ Deary Ian J IJ
INVESTIGATORS
JOURNAL
VOLUME: 35
ISSUE: 5
TITLE: Behavior genetics
ISOABBREVIATION: Behav. Genet.
YEAR: 2005
MONTH: Sep
DAY:
MEDLINEDATE:
SEASON:
CITEDMEDIUM: Print
ISSN: 0001-8244
ISSNTYPE: Print
MEDLINE JOURNAL
MEDLINETA: Behav Genet
COUNTRY: United States
ISSNLINKING: 0001-8244
NLMUNIQUEID: 0251711
PUBLICATION TYPE
PUBLICATIONTYPE TEXT
Comparative Study
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Twin Study
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
GRANTS
GRANTID AGENCY COUNTRY
Wellcome Trust United Kingdom
GENERAL NOTE
KEYWORDS
MESH HEADINGS
DESCRIPTORNAME QUALIFIERNAME
Analysis of Variance
Child
Cognition physiology
Environment physiology
Female physiology
Genetic Variation physiology
Health Surveys physiology
Humans physiology
Intelligence genetics
Male genetics
Models, Genetic genetics
Quantitative Trait, Heritable genetics
Reference Values genetics
Retrospective Studies genetics
Scotland genetics
Sex Factors genetics
Statistics, Nonparametric genetics
Twins psychology
Verbal Learning physiology
SUPPLEMENTARY MESH
GENE SYMBOLS
CHEMICALS
OTHER ID's