Fossella John, Sommer Tobias, Fan Jin, Wu Yanhong, Swanson James M, Pfaff Donald W, Posner Michael I
Sackler Institute of Developmental Psychobiology, Department of Psychiatry, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, 1300 York Avenue, New York, New York 10021, USA.
BMC Neurosci. 2002 Oct 4;3:14. doi: 10.1186/1471-2202-3-14.
Current efforts to study the genetic underpinnings of higher brain functions have been lacking appropriate phenotypes to describe cognition. One of the problems is that many cognitive concepts for which there is a single word (e.g. attention) have been shown to be related to several anatomical networks. Recently, we have developed an Attention Network Test (ANT) that provides a separate measure for each of three anatomically defined attention networks.
In this study we have measured the efficiency of neural networks related to aspects of attention using the ANT in a population of 200 adult subjects. We then examined genetic polymorphisms in four candidate genes (DRD4, DAT, COMT and MAOA) that have been shown to contribute to the risk of developing various psychiatric disorders where attention is disrupted. We find modest associations of several polymorphisms with the efficiency of executive attention but not with overall performance measures such as reaction time.
These results suggest that genetic variation may underlie inter-subject variation in the efficiency of executive attention. This study also shows that genetic influences on executive attention may be specific to certain anatomical networks rather than affecting performance in a global or non-specific manner. Lastly, this study further validates the ANT as an endophenotypic assay suitable for assessing how genes influence certain anatomical networks that may be disrupted in various psychiatric disorders.
目前在研究高等脑功能的遗传基础方面，一直缺乏合适的表型来描述认知。问题之一在于，许多只有单个词汇描述的认知概念（如注意力）已被证明与多个解剖学网络相关。最近，我们开发了一种注意力网络测试（ANT），它能对三个解剖学定义的注意力网络分别进行测量。
在本研究中，我们使用ANT在200名成年受试者群体中测量了与注意力各方面相关的神经网络效率。然后，我们检测了四个候选基因（DRD4、DAT、COMT和MAOA）中的基因多态性，这些基因已被证明与多种注意力受干扰的精神疾病的发病风险有关。我们发现几种多态性与执行性注意力效率存在适度关联，但与反应时间等整体表现指标无关。
这些结果表明，基因变异可能是受试者间执行性注意力效率差异的基础。本研究还表明，基因对执行性注意力的影响可能特定于某些解剖学网络，而非以全局或非特异性方式影响表现。最后，本研究进一步验证了ANT作为一种内表型分析方法，适用于评估基因如何影响某些在多种精神疾病中可能受到干扰的解剖学网络。
