Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for neuroticism, and the polygenic association with major depressive disorder

IMPORTANCE Neuroticism is a pervasive risk factor for psychiatric conditions. It genetically overlaps with major depressive disorder (MDD) and is therefore an important phenotype for psychiatric genetics. The Genetics of Personality Consortium has created a resource for genome-wide association analyses of personality traits in more than 63 000 participants (including MDD cases)

Meta-analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies for Extraversion : Findings from the Genetics of Personality Consortium

Extraversion is a relatively stable and heritable personality trait associated with numerous psychosocial, lifestyle and health outcomes. Despite its substantial heritability, no genetic variants have been detected in previous genome-wide association (GWA) studies, which may be due to relatively small sample sizes of those studies. Here, we report on a large meta-analysis of GWA studies for extraversion in 63,030 subjects in 29 cohorts. Extraversion item data from multiple personality inventories were harmonized across inventories and cohorts. No genome-wide significant associations were found at the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) level but there was one significant hit at the gene level for a long non-coding RNA site (LOC101928162). Genome-wide complex trait analysis in two large cohorts showed that the additive variance explained by common SNPs was not significantly different from zero, but polygenic risk scores, weighted using linkage information, significantly predicted extraversion scores in an independent cohort. These results show that extraversion is a highly polygenic personality trait, with an architecture possibly different from other complex human traits, including other personality traits. Future studies are required to further determine which genetic variants, by what modes of gene action, constitute the heritable nature of extraversion.Peer reviewe

Meta-analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies for Extraversion: Findings from the Genetics of Personality Consortium

Extraversion is a relatively stable and heritable personality trait associated with numerous psychosocial, lifestyle and health outcomes. Despite its substantial heritability, no genetic variants have been detected in previous genome-wide association (GWA) studies, which may be due to relatively small sample sizes of those studies. Here, we report on a large meta-analysis of GWA studies for extraversion in 63,030 subjects in 29 cohorts. Extraversion item data from multiple personality inventories were harmonized across inventories and cohorts. No genome-wide significant associations were found at the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) level but there was one significant hit at the gene level for a long non-coding RNA site (LOC101928162). Genome-wide complex trait analysis in two large cohorts showed that the additive variance explained by common SNPs was not significantly different from zero, but polygenic risk scores, weighted using linkage information, significantly predicted extraversion scores in an independent cohort. These results show that extraversion is a highly polygenic personality trait, with an architecture possibly different from other complex human traits, including other personality traits. Future studies are required to further determine which genetic variants, by what modes of gene action, constitute the heritable nature of extraversion

Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for extraversion:Findings from the Genetics of Personality Consortium

Extraversion is a relatively stable and heritable personality trait associated with numerous psychosocial, lifestyle and health outcomes. Despite its substantial heritability, no genetic variants have been detected in previous genome-wide association (GWA) studies, which may be due to relatively small sample sizes of those studies. Here, we report on a large meta-analysis of GWA studies for extraversion in 63,030 subjects in 29 cohorts. Extraversion item data from multiple personality inventories were harmonized across inventories and cohorts. No genome-wide significant associations were found at the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) level but there was one significant hit at the gene level for a long non-coding RNA site (LOC101928162). Genome-wide complex trait analysis in two large cohorts showed that the additive variance explained by common SNPs was not significantly different from zero, but polygenic risk scores, weighted using linkage information, significantly predicted extraversion scores in an independent cohort. These results show that extraversion is a highly polygenic personality trait, with an architecture possibly different from other complex human traits, including other personality traits. Future studies are required to further determine which genetic variants, by what modes of gene action, constitute the heritable nature of extraversion

Hair Cortisol in Twins : Heritability and Genetic Overlap with Psychological Variables and Stress-System Genes

A. Palotie on työryhmän jäsen.Hair cortisol concentration (HCC) is a promising measure of long-term hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity. Previous research has suggested an association between HCC and psychological variables, and initial studies of inter-individual variance in HCC have implicated genetic factors. However, whether HCC and psychological variables share genetic risk factors remains unclear. The aims of the present twin study were to: (i) assess the heritability of HCC; (ii) estimate the phenotypic and genetic correlation between HPA axis activity and the psychological variables perceived stress, depressive symptoms, and neuroticism; using formal genetic twin models and molecular genetic methods, i.e. polygenic risk scores (PRS). HCC was measured in 671 adolescents and young adults. These included 115 monozygotic and 183 dizygotic twin-pairs. For 432 subjects PRS scores for plasma cortisol, major depression, and neuroticism were calculated using data from large genome wide association studies. The twin model revealed a heritability for HCC of 72%. No significant phenotypic or genetic correlation was found between HCC and the three psychological variables of interest. PRS did not explain variance in HCC. The present data suggest that HCC is highly heritable. However, the data do not support a strong biological link between HCC and any of the investigated psychological variables.Peer reviewe

Author Correction:Study of 300,486 individuals identifies 148 independent genetic loci influencing general cognitive function

Christina M. Lill, who contributed to analysis of data, was inadvertently omitted from the author list in the originally published version of this article. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the article

Informed trade, uninformed trade and stock price delay

This paper examines how the probability of informed trading (PIN), a measure of information-based trading risk developed by Easley et al (1996), affects the speed at which stock prices adjust to market-wide information. We find that in all but the least active stock portfolios, prices of low PIN stocks are faster to impound market-wide news than those of high PIN stocks. PIN’s significance in explaining individual stock price delay is robust to the inclusion of size, liquidity and risk controls but is subsumed by the level of uninformed trade. Our results suggest that PIN’s role in the delayed response of stock prices is driven by the lack of uninformed or liquidity trading rather than by information asymmetry, and provide new empirical evidence regarding the channel through which trading affects the speed at which stock prices adjust to information. Our findings also suggest that at least part of the “private information” and informed trade captured by PIN relates to the skilled interpretation of public common factor information

Informed trade, uninformed trade and stock price delay

The probability of informed trading (PIN), a measure of information-based trading risk, has been broadly applied to empirical studies on asset pricing. However, it is still controversial whether PIN measures exclusively the risk of firm-specific private information or it also captures the private interpretation of market wide public information. This article examines the relevance of PIN to the delayed response of stock prices to market-wide information. We find that PIN significantly explains individual stock price delay even controlling for size, liquidity and risk, and low-PIN stock prices adjust to market information more rapidly not only because of a notably high level of informed trading but also an even much higher level of uninformed trading. Our findings support the notion that PIN also captures the private skilled interpretation of public common factor information by sophisticated investors, and provide new empirical evidence on how information-based trading affects the speed at which stock prices adjust to information

The high-volume return premium and changes in investor recognition

The phenomenon of high-volume return premium is generally attributed to the visibility hypothesis proposed by Gervais et al. (2001) based on the theoretical framework of Miller (1977) and Merton's (1987) investor recognition hypothesis. However, no existing empirical study has directly tested the visibility hypothesis due to the lack of high-frequency shareholding data. In this paper, we utilize the unique daily shareholding data for stocks listed on the Australian Stock Exchange to directly test this hypothesis by examining the relationship between the high-volume return premium and changes in investor recognition. We find that high-volume shocks do attract more investor attention and increase the investor base on the date of, and following, the shocks. This provides direct empirical evidence in support of the visibility explanation for the high-volume return premium. We also find that institutional and individual investors attend to different kinds of stocks; stocks attracting more institutional (individual) investors outperform (underperform) subsequent the volume shocks and exhibit a higher (lower) high-volume return premium. Our findings shed new light on the visibility hypothesis by showing that recognition/attention from institutional or individual investor is also crucial in determining the extent of the high-volume return premium and may help to reconcile the existing mixed empirical evidence across international markets