Combining neuroimaging and genetic information using imaging transcriptomics

Combining neuroimaging and genetics information for the study of brain disorders have always been challenging because of the complexity and high dimensionality of both kinds of data. Nevertheless, this is an endeavor worth pursuing because it will allow a comprehensive and multi-level description of the neurobiological circuits altered in brain disorders. Imaging transcriptomics is a recently developed approach for this purpose, which aims to identify the genetic variants associated with complex imaging phenotypes by correlating the spatial distribution of imaging findings with the regional expression levels of genes involved in critical biological processes. The analysis is therefore intended to obtain gene expression signatures associated with the different brain imaging features characterizing different aspects of disorders of mental health