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Review
. 2018 Aug:32:30-42.
doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2017.09.001. Epub 2017 Sep 12.

The utility of twins in developmental cognitive neuroscience research: How twins strengthen the ABCD research design

William G Iacono  1 , Andrew C Heath  2 , John K Hewitt  3 , Michael C Neale  4 , Marie T Banich  3 , Monica M Luciana  5 , Pamela A Madden  2 , Deanna M Barch  2 , James M Bjork  4
Affiliations
Review

The utility of twins in developmental cognitive neuroscience research: How twins strengthen the ABCD research design

William G Iacono et al. Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2018 Aug.

Abstract

The ABCD twin study will elucidate the genetic and environmental contributions to a wide range of mental and physical health outcomes in children, including substance use, brain and behavioral development, and their interrelationship. Comparisons within and between monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs, further powered by multiple assessments, provide information about genetic and environmental contributions to developmental associations, and enable stronger tests of causal hypotheses, than do comparisons involving unrelated children. Thus a sub-study of 800 pairs of same-sex twins was embedded within the overall Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) design. The ABCD Twin Hub comprises four leading centers for twin research in Minnesota, Colorado, Virginia, and Missouri. Each site is enrolling 200 twin pairs, as well as singletons. The twins are recruited from registries of all twin births in each State during 2006-2008. Singletons at each site are recruited following the same school-based procedures as the rest of the ABCD study. This paper describes the background and rationale for the ABCD twin study, the ascertainment of twin pairs and implementation strategy at each site, and the details of the proposed analytic strategies to quantify genetic and environmental influences and test hypotheses critical to the aims of the ABCD study.

Keywords: Brain function; Brain structure; Environment; Heritability; Substance use; Twins.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Path diagram for resemblance between observed variables between twin 1 and Twin 2 in a pair. Latent additive genetic (A), common environment (C), dominance genetic (D), and individual- specific environment (E) variables cause variation.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Multivariate genetic factor model for endophenotypes (End1-END3) and behavioral measures (Beh4–Beh7). Latent additive genetic (A), common environment (C), and individual-specific environment (E) sources of variation affect the factors and the residual variance specific to each measure.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Multivariate direction of causation model for five observed variables (×1–×5) with additive genetic (A), common environment (C), and individual-specific environment (E) sources of variation specific to each measure.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Genetic model of developmental change over time, following Eaves et al. (1986). The effects of occasion-specific (a1…at) and constant genetic factors (a) may accumulate over time through paths g. Similar processes may occur for environmental components.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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