SynthesisMolecular psychiatry2011
Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic.
Synthesis in Molecular psychiatry, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 263 papers, 13 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
263 citing papers in PubMed, 13 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Study of 300,486 individuals identifies 148 independent genetic loci influencing general cognitive function.Nature communications · 2018Pooled it
- Genome-wide association meta-analysis of 78,308 individuals identifies new loci and genes influencing human intelligence.Nature genetics · 2017Pooled it
- GWAS meta-analysis reveals novel loci and genetic correlates for general cognitive function: a report from the COGENT consortium.Molecular psychiatry · 2017Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Large Cross-National Differences in Gene × Socioeconomic Status Interaction on Intelligence.Psychological science · 2016Pooled it
- Independent evidence for an association between general cognitive ability and a genetic locus for educational attainment.American journal of medical genetics. Part B, Neuropsychiatric genetics : the official publication of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics · 2015Pooled it
- Glutamate Networks Implicate Cognitive Impairments in Schizophrenia: Genome-Wide Association Studies of 52 Cognitive Phenotypes.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2015Pooled it
- A meta-analysis of heritability of cognitive aging: minding the "missing heritability" gap.Neuropsychology review · 2015Pooled it
- Genetic contributions to variation in general cognitive function: a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in the CHARGE consortium (N=53949).Molecular psychiatry · 2015Pooled it
- Common genetic variants associated with cognitive performance identified using the proxy-phenotype method.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2014Pooled it
- Continuity of genetic and environmental influences on cognition across the life span: a meta-analysis of longitudinal twin and adoption studies.Psychological bulletin · 2014Pooled it
- Molecular genetic evidence for overlap between general cognitive ability and risk for schizophrenia: a report from the Cognitive Genomics consorTium (COGENT).Molecular psychiatry · 2014Pooled it
- Childhood intelligence is heritable, highly polygenic and associated with FNBP1L.Molecular psychiatry · 2014Pooled it
- A multimodal interrogation of Broca's area in the pediatric and adult human brain.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Genome-Wide Association Study of Cognitive Function in Population-Based Cohorts in Japan: The Tohoku Medical Megabank Brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2025Article
- Did Down-Regulated Instincts Enable Human Gene-Culture Coevolution?Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- Ge-SAND: an explainable deep learning-driven framework for disease risk prediction by uncovering complex genetic interactions in parallel.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- The independent role of fine particulate matter and genetic liability on cognition in older adults.Annals of general psychiatry · 2025Article
- A humanized NOVA1 splicing factor alters mouse vocal communications.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
203 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
32 authors.
Funding
Abstract
General intelligence is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities. Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial. We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549,692 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits. We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants. These estimates provide lower bounds for the narrow-sense heritability of the traits. We partitioned genetic variation on individual chromosomes and found that, on average, longer chromosomes explain more variation. Finally, using just SNP data we predicted ∼1% of the variance of crystallized and fluid cognitive phenotypes in an independent sample (P=0.009 and 0.028, respectively). Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation, and are consistent with many genes of small effects underlying the additive genetic influences on intelligence.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.