Heritability estimates on resting state fMRI data using the ENIGMA analysis pipeline

TL;DR

This study introduces a harmonized multi-site rsfMRI analysis pipeline within the ENIGMA framework, demonstrating consistent heritability estimates of 20-40% across major functional networks in two large cohorts.

Contribution

The paper presents a new harmonized analysis pipeline for multi-site rsfMRI data that reliably estimates heritability of resting state networks across diverse datasets.

Findings

Heritability of rsfMRI measures ranges from 20-40%.

The pipeline produces consistent results across different cohorts.

Resting state networks show significant heritability.

Abstract

Big data initiatives such as the Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis consortium (ENIGMA), combine data collected by independent studies worldwide to achieve more accurate estimates of effect sizes and more reliable and reproducible outcomes. Such efforts require harmonized analyses protocols to consistently extract phenotypes. Even so, challenges include wide variability of fMRI protocols and scanner platforms; this leads to site-to-site variance in quality, resolution and temporal signal-to-noise ratio (tSNR). An effective harmonization should provide optimal measures for data of different qualities. We developed a multi-site rsfMRI analysis pipeline to allow research groups around the world to process rsfMRI scans in a harmonized way, to extract consistent and quantitative measurements of connectivity and to perform coordinated statistical tests. We used the single-modality ENIGMA rsfMRI pipeline based on model-free Marchenko-Pastor PCA based denoising to verify and replicate findings of significant heritability of measures from resting state networks. We analyzed two independent cohorts, GOBS (Genetics of Brain Structure) and HCP (the Human Connectome Project), which collected data using conventional and connectomics oriented fMRI protocols. We used seed-based connectivity and dual-regression approaches to show that rsfMRI signal is consistently heritable across twenty major functional network measures. Heritability values of 20-40% were observed across both cohorts.