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Genetics of cognition and markers of neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration

In this paper we looked into the developmental and degenerative pathways underlying the identified genetic variants for general cognitive function. To do so, we related polygenic scores of cognition to functional, clinical and neuroimaging outcomes in the Rotterdam Study. We found that these genetic variants for cognition were mainly associated with developmental cognitive components, i.e. educational attainment and intracranial volume, and only to a small extent with degenerative cognitive components, i.e. cognitive decline, but not with clinical neurodegenerative outcomes. This suggests that cross-sectionally assessed cognition may have limited value as a neurodegeneration biomarker.

The full paper was published in Aging and can be found here.