Academic

Recently the UK Biobank study has conducted brain MRI imaging scans of over 40,000 participants. In addition, publicly available imaging genetic datasets also emerge from several other independent studies. We collected massive individual-level MRI data from different data resources, harmonized image processing procedures, and conducted the largest genetic studies so far for various neuroimaging traits from different structural and functional modalities. In this talk, we showcase novel clinical findings from our largescale analyses, such as the shared genetic influences among brain structures, functions, and a wide spectrum of clinical outcomes. We establish genetic mappings from hundreds of anatomical brain regions onto their corresponding functional connectivities, and further onto complex mental disorders, which may transverse our understanding of the disease emergence and development. We also discuss methodological challenges we have faced when processing these biobank-scale datasets and highlight opportunities to utilize the learned knowledge in downstream analyses for disease predictions and pathway analyses. This presentation is based on a series of works of the UNC BIG-S2 lab. Our results can be easily browsed through the Brain Imaging Genetics Knowledge Portal (BIG-KP).