ENIGMA‐EEG published their first article in November 2018 on the genetics underlying the strength of oscillations present in EEG brain activity signals (Smit et al., 2018). We associated genome‐wide SNPs to oscillation strength in the common delta, theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands, and alpha peak frequency. All these brain activity traits are under moderate to strong genetic control and are to some degree biomarkers of behavioral traits and liability to psychiatric illnesses (Boutros et al., 2008; Klimesch, 1996; Porjesz & Begleiter, 2003). Our primary aim in this project was to increase power to find genetic associations by increasing sample size. The sample size of previous studies was modest, with the largest study analyzing a sample of just over 4,000 individuals (Malone et al., 2014). Malone et al. did not find any significant individual SNPs, but detected associations at the gene level for delta power.
