Biology subjects

Judd, N.

Publications and source records attributed to Judd, N..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

No effect of education on Telomere Length: a natural experiment in aging individuals

Telomere length is increasingly used as a proxy for an aging exposome - an index of non-genetic environmental (and behavioral) exposures that an individual encounters, leading to differences in rates of aging. One of the largest associations with telomere length is schooling, leading to the suggestion of long-lasting protective effects of (additional) education. However, for ethical and practical reasons, education cannot generally be randomized, precluding an understanding of the causal effect of education on health outcomes. Here, we leverage a well-established policy change in the UK to test whether an additional year of education caused differences in telomere length decades later. Employing a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, we find no effect of education on telomere length in the UK BioBank across multiple analytic frameworks (continuity, local randomization & Bayesian approaches) and a series of robustness tests, such as increasing the analysis window around the cutoff, and changing the prior, similarly find no effect of an additional year of education on telomere length. This robust finding contrasts the prevailing aging exposome account of telomere length and offers a cautionary note in attributing causal power to environmental factors based on observational differences.

genetics↗

bioRxiv2024

ggrain - a ggplot2 extension for raincloud plots

Clear data visualization is essential to effectively communicate empirical findings across various research fields. Raincloud plots fill this need by offering a transparent and statistically robust approach to data visualization. This is achieved by combining three plots in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. First, a dot plot displays raw data with minimal distortion, allowing a fast glance at the sample size and outlier identification. Next, a box plot displays key distributional summary statistics such as the median and interquartile range. Lastly, a violin plot transparently displays the underlying distribution of the data. Despite the widespread use of raincloud plots, an R-package in alignment with the grammar of graphics was lacking. `ggrain` fills this need by offering one easy-to-use function (`geom_rain`) allowing the quick and seamless plotting of rainclouds in the R ecosystem. Further, it enables more complex plotting features such as factorial grouping, mapping with a secondary (continuous) covariate, and connecting observations longitudinally across multiple waves.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2024

No effect of additional education on long-term brain structure: a preregistered natural experiment in over 30,000 individuals.

Education is related to a wide variety of beneficial health, behavioral, and societal outcomes. However, whether education causes long-term structural changes in the brain remains unclear. A pressing challenge is that individuals self-select into continued education, thereby introducing a wide variety of environmental and genetic confounders. Fortunately, natural experiments allow us to isolate the causal impact of increased education from individual (and societal) characteristics. Here, we exploit a policy change in the UK (the 1972 ROSLA act) that increased the amount of mandatory schooling from 15 to 16 years of age to study the impact of education on long-term structural brain outcomes in the UK Biobank. Using regression discontinuity - a causal inference method - we find no evidence of an effect from an additional year of education on any structural neuroimaging outcomes. This null result is robust across modalities, regions, and analysis strategies. An additional year of education is a substantial cognitive intervention, yet we find no evidence for sustained experience-dependent plasticity. Our results provide a challenge for prominent accounts of cognitive or brain reserve theories which identify education as a major protective factor to lessen adverse aging effects. Our preregistered findings are one of the first implementations of regression discontinuity on neural data - opening the door for causal inference in population-based neuroimaging.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Independent effects of socioeconomic status and genetics on adolescent cognition and brain development.

Genetic factors and socioeconomic (SES) inequalities play a large role in educational attainment, and both have been associated with variations in brain structure and cognition. However, genetics and SES are correlated, and no prior study has assessed their neural associations independently. Here we used polygenic score for educational attainment (EduYears-PGS) as well as SES, in a longitudinal study of 551 adolescents, to tease apart genetic and environmental associations with brain development and cognition. Subjects received a structural MRI scan at ages 14 and 19. At both time-points, they performed three working memory (WM) tasks. SES and EduYears-PGS were correlated (r = 0.27) and had both common and independent associations with brain structure and cognition. Specifically, lower SES was related to less total cortical surface area and lower WM. EduYears-PGS was also related to total cortical surface area, but in addition had a regional association with surface area in the right parietal lobe, a region related to non-verbal cognitive functions, including mathematics, spatial cognition, and WM. SES, but not EduYears-PGS, was related to a change in total cortical surface area from age 14 to 19. This is the first study demonstrating a regional association of EduYears-PGS and the independent prediction of SES on cognitive function and brain development. It suggests that the SES inequalities, in particular parental education, are related to global aspects of cortical development, and exert a persistent influence on brain development during adolescence. Significance statementThe influence of socioeconomic (SES) inequalities on brain and cognitive development is a hotly debated topic. However, previous studies have not considered that genetic factors overlap with SES. Here we showed, for the first time, that SES and EduYears-PGS (a score from thousands of genetic markers for educational attainment) have independent associations with both cognition and global cortical surface area in adolescents. EduYears-PGS also had a localized association in the brain: the intraparietal sulcus, a region related to non-verbal intelligence. In contrast, SES had global, but not regional, associations, and these persisted throughout adolescence. This suggests that the influence of SES inequalities is widespread - a result that opposes the current paradigm and can help inform policies in education.

neuroscience↗