In a recent Bloomberg article discussing collaborative global research efforts on brain imaging, a UCLA-housed network better known as Project ENIGMA has helped lead scientists to massive data centers of composite brain scans that may aid in the search for specific human gene patterns that affect the brain.

Such newly established worldwide database centers of MRI, DTI, and fMRI brain scans comprise statistically significant data on over twenty thousand global subjects. Utilizing these massive data centers has helped international researchers collaborate to discover new DNA patterns that may be linked to human intelligence and memory. Among the findings published in the journal Nature Genetics, researchers were able to link a particular genetic variation of DNA to brain size. Additionally, scientists may also have identified a gene that could be tied to the rate at which the hippocampus, critical for human memory, shrinks as people age.

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