Brain Imaging Genetics (BIG)
General background
Genetic studies on psychiatric disorders generally include patients for which diagnosis is based on clinical assessment. The lack of objective diagnostic tests may impact the results of these studies. In the Brain Imaging Genetics (BIG) we combine brain imaging and genetic analysis to identify brain endophenotypes that may be related to genetic variation.
Objective
The overall aim of the project is to identify the relation between common and rare genetic variation and brain structure variation in healthy individuals. A subproject of particular interest aims to identify dispensable regions in the human genome.
Project description
We have a database of more than 600 healthy individuals with both genetic and imaging data. Genetic data have been obtained from Array CGH using Affymetrix GeneChip 6.0 SNP arrays. Imaging data have been obtained from structural MRI brain scans using 1.5T and 3T scanning protocols. We perform a genome-wide association study (GWAS) as well as copy number variation (CNV) analyses to identify relations between common SNPs and rare CNVs respectively. To identify dispensable regions, we detected and validated homozygous deletions larger than 10kb in all individuals.
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