{"doi":"10.1101/2024.09.09.611603","title":"Preschool musicality is associated with school-age communication abilities through genes related to rhythmicity","abstract":"Abstract Early-life musical engagement is an understudied but developmentally important and heritable precursor of later (social) communication and language abilities. This study aims to uncover the aetiological mechanisms linking musical to communication abilities. We derived polygenic scores (PGS) for self-reported beat synchronisation abilities (PGS rhythmicity ) in children (N≤6,737) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children and tested their association with preschool musical (0.5-5 years) and school-age (social) communication and cognition-related abilities (9-12 years). We further assessed whether relationships between preschool musicality and school-age communication are shared through PGS rhythmicity , using structural equation modelling techniques. PGS rhythmicity were associated with preschool musicality ( Nagelkerke -R 2 =0.70-0.79%), and school-age communication and cognition-related abilities (R 2 =0.08-0.41%), but not social communication. We identified links between preschool musicality and school-age speech-and syntax-related communication abilities as captured by known genetic influences underlying rhythmicity (shared effect β=0.0065(SE=0.0021), p =0.0016), above and beyond general cognition, strengthening support for early music intervention programmes.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2024,"id":503143,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9406,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":806571,"name":"Ellen Verhoef","orcid":"0000-0002-8315-1095","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":257608,"name":"Aysu Okbay","orcid":"0000-0002-5170-7781","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1353070,"name":"Janne R Vermeulen","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1353071,"name":"Celeste Figaroa","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":455467,"name":"Miriam Lense","orcid":"0000-0003-4362-3032","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":109368,"name":"Simon E. Fisher","orcid":"0000-0002-3132-1996","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":244448,"name":"Reyna L. Gordon","orcid":"0000-0003-1643-6979","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":256442,"name":"Beaté St Pourcain","orcid":"0000-0002-4680-3517","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1352759,"name":"Lucía de Hoyos","orcid":"0000-0001-7252-1591","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":44,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:10:27.781502Z","pmid":"39314312","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}