Publications by authors named "A K Merikangas"
Article Synopsis
- Both psychiatric vulnerability and cortical structure are influenced by common genetic variants, but the exact shared genetics between psychiatric disorders and brain structure is not well understood.
- The study analyzed data from around 700,000 individuals to find 50 shared genetic loci associated with surface area and 26 with cortical thickness, noting that some risk alleles could both increase and decrease regional brain size.
- A hierarchical genetic architecture was identified, showing that specific regions of the brain, like the association and sensorimotor cortex, have varying levels of genetic influence connecting psychiatric disorders and brain structural changes.
Alcohol use disorders (AUD) are commonly occurring, heritable and polygenic disorders with etiological origins in the brain and the environment. To outline the causes and consequences of alcohol-related milestones, including AUD, and their related psychiatric comorbidities, the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) was launched in 1989 with a gene-brain-behavior framework. COGA is a family based, diverse (~25% self-identified African American, ~52% female) sample, including data on 17,878 individuals, ages 7-97 years, in 2246 families of which a proportion are densely affected for AUD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlcohol use disorder (AUD) and related health conditions result from a complex interaction of genetic, neural and environmental factors, with differential impacts across the lifespan. From its inception, the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) has focused on the importance of brain function as it relates to the risk and consequences of alcohol use and AUD, through the examination of noninvasively recorded brain electrical activity and neuropsychological tests. COGA's sophisticated neurophysiological and neuropsychological measures, together with rich longitudinal, multi-modal family data, have allowed us to disentangle brain-related risk and resilience factors from the consequences of prolonged and heavy alcohol use in the context of genomic and social-environmental influences over the lifespan.
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- * The study uses a family-based approach and incorporates various assessments, including clinical and neurophysiological data, to gain insights into the genetic risks and patterns of substance use disorders.
- * COGA uniquely includes a significant number of participants of African ancestry and emphasizes data sharing, contributing to larger GWAS consortia, thereby enhancing research on the genetic factors influencing AUD.
Memory problems are common among older adults with a history of alcohol use disorder (AUD). Employing a machine learning framework, the current study investigates the use of multi-domain features to classify individuals with and without alcohol-induced memory problems. A group of 94 individuals (ages 50-81 years) with alcohol-induced memory problems (the memory group) were compared with a matched control group who did not have memory problems.
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