Genetic Link Identified Between Face and Brain Shape by Hannah Joy on April 5, 2021 at 10:35 PM About 76 overlapping genetic locations have been identified that shape both our face and brain, reveals an interdisciplinary team led by KU Leuven and Stanford. What the researchers didn't find is evidence that this genetic overlap also predicts someone's behavioral-cognitive traits or risk of conditions such as Alzheimer's disease. This means that the findings help to debunk several persistent pseudoscientific claims about what our face reveals about us. There were already indications of a genetic link between the shape of our face and that of our brain, says Professor Peter Claes from the Laboratory for Imaging Genetics at KU Leuven, who is the joint senior author of the study with Professor Joanna Wysocka from the Stanford University School of Medicine.