The Association Between Schizophrenia Risk Variants and Creativity in Healthy Han Chinese Subjects

• Main Authors: Dan Wang, Tingting Guo, Qi Guo, Shun Zhang, Jinghuan Zhang, Jing Luo, GeseDNA Research Team, Leilei Zhang, Qian Sun, Zenan Dou, Yanmeng Zou, Shan Guan, Hoyin Lo, Lingzhi Song
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-10-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: schizophrenia; creativity; genes; divergent thinking; risk variants
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02218/full

Although previous evidence has suggested that there is a genetic link between schizophrenia and creativity, the specific genetic variants that underlie the link are still largely unknown. To further explore the potential genetic link between schizophrenia and creativity, in a sample of 580 healthy Han Chinese subjects, this study aimed to (1) validate the role of Neuregulin 1 (NRG1) rs6994992 (one schizophrenia risk variant that has been previously linked to creativity in the European population) in the relationship between schizophrenia and creativity and (2) explore the associations between 10 other schizophrenia risk variants and creativity. For NRG1 rs6994992, the result validated its association with creativity measures. However, since NRG1 rs6994992 is not a schizophrenia risk variant in the Han Chinese population, the validated association suggested that ethnic difference may exist in the relationship between NRG1 rs6994992, schizophrenia and creativity. For other schizophrenia risk variants, the result only demonstrated a nominal association between ZNF536 rs2053079 and creativity measures which would not survive correction for multiple testing. No association between polygenic risk score for these 10 schizophrenia risk variants and creativity measures was observed. In conclusion, this study provides limited evidence for the associations between these schizophrenia risk variants and creativity in healthy Han Chinese subjects. Future studies are warranted to better understand the potential genetic link between schizophrenia and creativity.