MacDonald Angus W, Carter Cameron S, Flory Janine D, Ferrell Robert E, Manuck Stephen B
Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, USA.
J Abnorm Psychol. 2007 May;116(2):306-12. doi: 10.1037/0021-843X.116.2.306.
The role of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) val158met in prefrontal cortical deficits associated with the liability to schizophrenia remains controversial. This study evaluated 464 healthy adult participants using three measures of executive functions in working memory: a 3-back version of the N-back continuous performance task (CPT) and two variants of the AX-CPT. The interpretability of N-back performance was confounded by possible generalized deficits, whereas the AX variants included internal controls for uncovering specific deficits. There was no relationship between the COMT genotype and N-back performance, whereas val/val individuals had a specific deficit on a dot-pattern version of the AX-CPT. In this case, a specific executive function known as context processing appeared to be compromised. These data suggest that the interpretability gained by including task manipulations to uncover specific deficits can enhance associations between cognitive and genetic levels of analysis.
儿茶酚-O-甲基转移酶（COMT）基因val158met在与精神分裂症易感性相关的前额叶皮质功能缺陷中的作用仍存在争议。本研究使用工作记忆中执行功能的三项测量方法对464名健康成年参与者进行了评估：N-回溯连续作业任务（CPT）的3-回溯版本以及AX-CPT的两个变体。N-回溯表现的可解释性因可能存在的广泛性缺陷而混淆，而AX变体包含用于发现特定缺陷的内部对照。COMT基因型与N-回溯表现之间没有关系，而val/val个体在AX-CPT的点模式版本上存在特定缺陷。在这种情况下，一种称为情境处理的特定执行功能似乎受到了损害。这些数据表明，通过纳入任务操作以发现特定缺陷所获得的可解释性可以增强认知和基因分析水平之间的关联。
