title: Trajectories of anatomic brain development as a phenotype.
abstract: Many cognitive, emotional and behavioural traits, as well as psychiatric disorders are highly heritable. However, identifying the specific genes and mechanisms by which this heritability manifests has been elusive. One approach to make this problem more tractable has been to attempt to identify and quantify biological markers that are intermediate steps along the gene-to-behaviour path. The field of neuroimaging offers several anatomic and physiologic possibilities to quantify. Stability over time has been proposed as a desired feature for these intermediate phenotypes. However, in this paper we discuss the value of looking at trajectories of anatomic brain development (i.e. morphometric changes over time), as opposed to static measures, as a phenotype. Examples drawn from longitudinal anatomic magnetic resonance imaging studies of typical development, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and childhood-onset schizophrenia are used to demonstrate the utility of trajectories of brain development as a phenotypic bridge between genes and behaviour in health and in illness.
authors.affiliation: Brain Imaging Unit, Child Psychiatry Branch NIMH, 10 Center Drive, MSC 1367 Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
authors.forename: Jay N
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Giedd
authors.forename: Rhoshel K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Lenroot
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shaw
authors.forename: Francois
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Lalonde
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Celano
authors.forename: Samantha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: White
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tossell
authors.forename: Anjene
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Addington
authors.forename: Nitin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gogtay
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000235:genetics / Q000503:physiopathology; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D002648:Child; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006801:Humans; D010641:Phenotype; D012016:Reference Values; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000235:genetics / Q000503:physiopathology