Date of Award
Fall 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Public Health
First Advisor
Zhang, Heping
Abstract
Human psychological traits involve multiple domains of individual differences in human behaviors, such as cognitive abilities, personalities, and psychiatric disorders. These psychological traits are closely linked to well-being. Therefore, studying the biological basis of psychological traits is crucial for improving the overall quality of life. Both genetics and neuroimaging are highly related to human psychological traits. Numerous studies have shown the strong genetic influence on individual differences in human psychological traits. Furthermore, neuroimaging, a non-invasive technique to examine brain structure and function, has evolved into a powerful tool for analyzing human psychological traits. The purpose of this dissertation is to propose novel statistical methods to dissect the relationship among genetics, neuroimaging, and human psychological traits. We utilize genetic, neuroimaging, and integrative studies to understand the biological mechanisms underlying cognitive processes and psychiatric disorders. In Chapter 2, we propose the Bayesian connectome-based heterogeneity analysis (BCHA) to associate multi-state brain functional connectivity with a behavioral outcome while uncovering neurodevelopmental subtypes with distinct brain-to-behavior relationships. Chapter 3 presents an imaging genetic study on human white matter microstructure. We adopt the concept of super-variant, a combination of alleles in multiple loci, and perform super-variant identification and validation for 22 white matter fractional anisotropy phenotypes derived from diffusion tensor imaging. Chapter 4 introduces a novel integrative method, named Integrated ranking and aggregation method for identifying integrative super-variants (IRAS), to incorporate multimodal neuroimaging simultaneously into genetic association studies. This dissertation would provide insights into the promising directions in the research of the relationship among genetics, neuroimaging, and human psychological traits.
Recommended Citation
Wang, Shiying, "Neuroimaging and Genetic Studies: Toward an Understanding of Human Psychological Traits" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1150.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1150
