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Abstract #0222

Iron-related gene expression associated with magnetic susceptibility reductions: Application to the pathophysiology of a movement disorder population

Ahmad Seif Kanaan1,2, Alfred Anwander1, Riccardo Metere1, Andreas Schäfer3, Torsten Schlumm1, Jamie Near4, Berkin Bilgic5, Kirsten Müller-Vahl2, and Harald Möller1

1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, 2Department of Psychiatry, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany, 3Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany, 4Douglas Mental Health Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, 5Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States

We employ a genetic-imaging approach to examine the underlying genetic basis of magnetic susceptibility reductions at a major locus of pathophysiology in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS). Voxel-wise statistical differences of motor-striatal susceptibility exhibited significant associations with the expression profile of iron-related gene-sets extracted from the Allen Human Brain Atlas, thus suggesting that the expression of iron-related genes coincides with patterns of susceptibility reductions in GTS. This work supports previous studies relating magnetic susceptibility to brain iron and provides an example of an analytic strategy in which valuable insights can be gleaned by exploring associations between gene-expression and image-derived phenotypes.


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