Thanks for the question! Indeed, our phenome scan (Table S2) revealed links with wrist-accelerometer traits — notably fraction acceleration ≤ 1 mg (inactive time) and no-wear bias–adjusted acceleration maximum (peak movement) over 7 days, plus self-report measures like "walking for pleasure". 🏃‍♀️

🙌 Thanks to everyone involved — especially colleagues at @humboldtuni.bsky.social, @mpicbs.bsky.social, and @unileipzig.bsky.social for their support and collaboration.

📚 Take-home:
Brain aging is a complex but quantifiable trait shaped by genes and environment. Our findings suggest that healthier lifestyles are linked to younger-looking brains. Key genes like MAPT and pathways in immunity and neurogenesis give us clues for keeping brains younger for longer.

We estimate that ~9–11k common genetic variants contribute to BAG — a level of polygenicity similar to height, but much lower than neuroticism. That’s good news: discovery power scales well, and with ~1 M participants (phew — still quite a way to go!) we could capture most common genetic influences.

⚡ Mendelian randomization suggests causal effects:
Higher blood pressure and type 2 diabetes drive accelerated brain aging — each 1 SD increase in blood pressure corresponds to ~0.5 years older brain age.

🔗 Genetic correlations show broad overlap with lifestyle, mental, physical, and socioeconomic traits:
⬆️ blood pressure, diabetes, drinking, smoking, depressed mood
⬇️ lung function, cognition, longevity, education, income
🧠 Brain aging lies at the intersection of body, mind, and environment.

🔎 Pathway analyses show enrichment for:
• Immune and viral response genes
• Neurogenesis and axon development
• Small GTPase binding – key regulators of cellular timing mechanisms

Brain aging is not just “wear and tear” — it’s tied to immune and developmental biology.

🧬 A new polygenic score for BAG explains ~10% of variance — a big leap from previous ~2%. Still, prediction in non-European ancestries remains limited, highlighting the urgent need for more diverse genomic data.

💥 We identified 59 genomic loci, including 39 never linked before to brain aging. The strongest signal is at MAPT (tau) — a well-known Alzheimer’s gene — confirming its central role in brain structural aging.

🧠 The brain age gap (BAG) = your brain’s predicted MRI age minus your actual age.

A higher BAG means your brain looks “older” than expected. We show BAG is substantially heritable (~23–29% due to common variants), meaning genes do play a big role — but environment and lifestyle matter too.

🧠 Why do some brains age faster than others?
🧬 Our new Nature Aging study of over 56,000 participants explores the genetics of the “brain age gap” — the difference between your brain’s biological and chronological age.
nature.com/articles/s43587-025-00962-7

Thread below 👇

She gently reminded us that every primate — just like us — has their own personality, emotions, relationships, and individuality. Because of her, we see our place more clearly among the other beings we share this world with.

The funnel plot suggests a formidable publication bias—excellent material for class discussions! You can find my R script on OSF (osf.io/u6hsn/) and adapt it for your own purposes. 2/2
#OpenScience #Reproducibility #BehavioralGenetics

A while ago, when I was in my first semester teaching behavioral genetics, I was eager to discuss candidate gene controversies. I created an interactive funnel plot based on the meta-analysis by Karg et al. (2011), who reported strong evidence for an effect of 5-HTTLPR × stress on depression. 1/2

Fantastic work on Personality Genetics—absolutely love it! 🚀 Curious if applying SBayesRC with 7M variants could push polygenic score performance even further 🤔

Welcome to the Bluesky account for Stand Up for Science 2025!

Keep an eye on this space for updates, event information, and ways to get involved. We can't wait to see everyone #standupforscience2025 on March 7th, both in DC and locations nationwide!

#scienceforall #sciencenotsilence

🚨 This will become a curated list of awesome tools for complex trait genetics, **add yours**! it may become a review in which case those who contribute are invited as co-authors.

Incredibly proud to see our latest work out in Nature Genetics: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here we share our FLAMES framework, which predicts the effector genes in GWAS loci with state-of-the-art precision🔥

Special thanks to @daniposthu.bsky.social

A full thread describing findings below!

#OHBM2024 in Seoul was an unforgettable experience! Met brilliant minds, engaged in heated discussions, and partied with incredible people. ⬇️ Impressions from the conference and the city! 🏙️ Massive thanks to the USC team for the stunning drone footage of the ENIGMA rooftop party. vimeo.com/980726262