Abstract The twin study design in brain imaging offers a very effective way of determining heritability of the human brain. The difference in variability between monozygotic (MZ) and same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins can be used in determining heritability. We propose to determine the extent of heritability of both structural and functional brain networks at the voxel-level using 200 pairs of twin (400 individuals) of fMRI/DTI and MRI. To obtain high- resolution heritability map of the brain networks, the project requires taking more than 25 thousands voxels for fMRI and 1.2million voxels for MRI/DTI as network nodes, which is a serious computational challenge. The project proposes many new algorithms for constructing large-scale brain networks and subsequently mapping the heritability of the networks. This study will provide the brain imaging community with the baseline brain network heritability maps as well as a versatile open-source toolbox of algorithms for modeling and visualizing large-scale brain networks of three different imaging modalities.

Narrative The goal of this project is to develop algorithms and open-source software for determining the heritability of large-scale brain networks using DTI, fMRI and MRI of 200 pairs of twins. The proposed algorithms will be used to establish the baseline map for the genetic influences on brain networks at the voxel-level. Considering recent surge of interests in the fusion of genetics and imaging phenotypes, such detailed heritability maps will be highly useful.