Researchers at the University of California, San Diego and the School of Medicine have found that the three-dimensional shape of the cerebral cortex - the wrinkled outer layer of the brain controlling many functions of thinking and sensation - strongly correlates with ancestral background

The study opens the door to more precise studies of brain anatomy going forward and could eventually lead to more personalized medicine approaches for diagnosing and treating brain diseases. "If we can account for a large percentage of brain structure based on an individual's genes, we're in a better position to detect smaller variations in the brain that might be important in understanding disease or developmental issues," said the study's senior author Anders Dale, PhD, professor of radiology, neurosciences, psychiatry and cognitive science, and director of the Center for Translational Imaging and Precision Medicine at UC San Diego. In their study, the researchers found that they could predict with "a relatively high degree of accuracy an individual's genetic ancestry based on the geometry of their cerebral cortex." They found no relationship between brain shape and functional or cognitive abilities, Dale said, but rather a trove of information about how minute differences in brain geometry could be correlated with genetic lineage. "The geometry of the brain's cortical surface contains rich information about ancestry," said the study's first author, Chun Chieh Fan, MD, a graduate student in cognitive science. "Even in the modern contemporary U.S. population, with its melting pot of different cultures, it was still possible to correlate brain cortex structure to ancestral background." Four continental populations were used as ancestral references: European, West African, East Asian and Native American. The metrics for summarizing genetic ancestry in each ancestral component were standardized as proportions ranging from 0% to 100%. "We looked to see how well we could predict how much genetic ancestry they had from Africa, Europe and so forth," said study co-author Terry Jernigan, PhD, professor of cognitive science, psychiatry and radiology, adding that cortex differences between various lineages were focused in certain areas. "There were various systematic differences, particularly in the folding and gyrification patterns of the cortex," said Jernigan, also director of the university's Center for Human Development. "Those patterns were quite strongly reflective of genetic ancestry." The researchers reported that the cortical patterns accounted for 47% to 66% of the variation among individuals in their genetic ancestry, depending on the ancestral lineage.