The hippocampus is a complex brain structure with key roles in cognitive and emotional processing and with subregion abnormalities associated with a range of disorders and psychopathologies. Here we combine data from two large independent young adult twin/sibling cohorts to obtain the most accurate estimates to date of genetic covariation between hippocampal subfield volumes and the hippocampus as a single volume. The combined sample included 2148 individuals, comprising 1073 individuals from 627 families (mean age = 22.3 years) from the Queensland Twin IMaging (QTIM) Study, and 1075 individuals from 454 families (mean age = 28.8 years) from the Human Connectome Project (HCP). Hippocampal subfields were segmented using FreeSurfer version 6.0 (CA4 and dentate gyrus were phenotypically and genetically indistinguishable and were summed to a single volume). Multivariate twin modeling was conducted in OpenMx to decompose variance into genetic and environmental sources. Bivariate analyses of hippocampal formation and each subfield volume showed that 10%–72% of subfield genetic variance was independent of the hippocampal formation, with greatest specificity found for the smaller volumes; for example, CA2/3 with 42% of genetic variance being independent of the hippocampus; fissure (63%); fimbria (72%); hippocampus-amygdala transition area (41%); parasubiculum (62%). In terms of genetic influence, whole hippocampal volume is a good proxy for the largest hippocampal subfields, but a poor substitute for the smaller subfields. Additive genetic sources accounted for 49%–77% of total variance for each of the subfields in the combined sample multivariate analysis. In addition, the multivariate analyses were sufficiently powered to identify common environmental influences (replicated in QTIM and HCP for the molecular layer and CA4/dentate gyrus, and accounting for 7%–16% of total variance for 8 of 10 subfields in the combined sample). This provides the clearest indication yet from a twin study that factors such as home environment may influence hippocampal volumes (albeit, with caveats).

In 1709, William Freke, a pious, well-educated, and well-read English gentleman living in Dorset, declared to the world that he was the second coming of Elijah, sent to announce the arrival of the New Jerusalem and to proclaim the beginning of Christ's reign upon earth. There is no evidence to indicate that anyone at the time took him seriously, and given this absence of contemporary interest, it might be tempting to dismiss Freke as an isolated and insignificant crackpot. But this would be a misreading of his career. Research over the past couple of decades has decisively determined that the twenty years following 1690 were a period of intense religious speculation in England and the larger Atlantic world when expectations of the millennium were high. Far from being an isolated enthusiast crying in the wilderness, Freke was in fact a prophet who was connected in a variety of ways to a much larger network of religious enthusiasts in England and on the Continent that reveals much about the religious milieu of, and the millenarian interconnections that existed during, the last decade of the seventeenth and first decade of the eighteenth century.

The development of late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) is under strong genetic control and there is great interest in the genetic variants that confer increased risk. The Alzheimer's disease risk gene, growth factor receptor bound protein 2-associated protein (GAB2), has been shown to provide a 1.27–1.51 increased odds of developing LOAD for rs7101429 major allele carriers, in case-control analysis. GAB2 is expressed across the brain throughout life, and its role in LOAD pathology is well understood. Recent studies have begun to examine the effect of genetic variation in the GAB2 gene on differences in the brain. However, the effect of GAB2 on the young adult brain has yet to be considered. Here we found a significant association between the GAB2 gene and morphological brain differences in 755 young adult twins (469 females) (M = 23.1, SD = 3.1 years), using a gene-based test with principal components regression (PCReg). Detectable differences in brain morphology are therefore associated with variation in the GAB2 gene, even in young adults, long before the typical age of onset of Alzheimer's disease.

The aim of the high church agitation in the 1690s for a convocation was to establish doctrinal discipline within the anglican church. When convocation met in 1701 the lower house produced censures on Toland's Christianity not mysterious and Burnet's Exposition of the thirty-nine articles.

It was Francis Atterbury who insisted that Burnet's Exposition was heretical. He had long been critical of Burnet's views on the trinity and his erastian interpretation of English church history in his History of the reformation. And if Burnet's History was an attempt re-write English church history from the perspective of a latitudinarian, then his Exposition was its theological counterpart.

It was assumed that the charges against Burnet were lost. But a copy of them has surfaced and it confirms that it was the connection between latitudinarians and dissent which led to the attack on Burnet. In his zeal to heal divisions within anglicanism and between anglicans and other protestants Burnet had introduced a ‘latitude and diversity of opinions’ which misrepresented true anglican doctrine. This was dangerous, because Burnet intended his Exposition as ‘a platform laid for Comprehension’ with the dissenters and other ‘Adversaries of our Church’. These included obvious heretics like socinians and the deist Toland.

In the course of the 1690s and into the early eighteenth century a number of English divines and laymen became embroiled in a pamphlet war on the doctrine of the Trinity. It was a wide-ranging debate and its participants included Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Socinians, deists and Arians. Until recently, however, this controversy had received scant attention from historians. It is only within the last few years that an interest in the trinitarian controversy has emerged: a number of works have appeared on the more notable of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century anti-trinitarian thinkers, and J. C. D. Clark has pointed out the political implications of anti-trinitarian views. There is, nevertheless, one aspect of the trinitarian controversy which has remained relatively untouched, and that is the debate on the Trinity which raged within the Established Church.