Apr. 15, 2012 In the world’s largest brain study to date, a team
of more than 200 scientists from 100 institutions worldwide
collaborated to map the human genes that boost or sabotage the
brain’s resistance to a variety of mental illnesses and
Alzheimer’s disease. Published April 15 in the advance online
edition of Nature Genetics, the study also uncovers new genes
that may explain individual differences in brain size and
intelligence. “We searched for two things in this study,” said
senior author Paul Thompson, professor of neurology at the David
Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the UCLA
Laboratory of Neuro Imaging. “We hunted for genes that increase
your risk for a single disease that your children can inherit.
We also looked for factors that cause tissue atrophy and reduce
brain size, which is a biological marker for hereditary
disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression,
Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.” Three years ago, Thompson’s
lab partnered with geneticists Nick Marti