ABSTRACT
Norepinephrine is involved in the arousal of attention and the treatment of affective disorders. Therefore, we hypothesized that adrenergic receptors underpinned individual differences in attention regulation and emotional processes of healthy populations. Here, we investigated to what extent the expression of ADRA2B, an adrenergic receptor, modulated attention regulation and emotional processes. We evaluated orientation of attention, emotion regulation, and pleasantness ratings of expressions and words in 665 college students, and then genotyped the +901 Ins/Del variants in ADRA2B of these participants. The results indicated that +901 Ins/Del significantly modulated orientation of attention to facial expressions and emotional words, such that the Del allele facilitated reorientation to the originally attended locations. However, this polymorphism exerted no significant effects on emotional regulation of attention and pleasantness ratings of emotional stimulus. These findings suggest that ADRA2B is closely related to the individual difference in human attention orientation, but not to the individual difference in emotional processing.
Subject(s)
Attention/physiology , Emotions/physiology , Facial Expression , Gene Deletion , Orientation/physiology , Receptors, Adrenergic, alpha-2/genetics , Adult , Analysis of Variance , Cues , Female , Genotype , Humans , Male , Photic Stimulation , Vocabulary , Young AdultABSTRACT
ObjectiveTo study the associations of Val66Met functional polymorphism in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)with creativity and personality traits in a healthy college student population.MethodThe creativity performance and personality traits of the 830 healthy college students (272 males and 558females) were assessed with Williams Creativity Scale (CAP) and adult Eysenek Personality Questionnaire (EPQ),then study was performed on the association Val66Met in BDNF with creativity and personality traits.ResultsThe results indicated that Val66Met was significantly associated with the curiosity of CAP (F=0.519,P=0.036).The numbers of Val allele showed a positive correlation to the performance of curiosity.Val66Val genotype individuals had the best performance (31.924 ± 4.010 ) while the Met66Met ones showed the worst performante(30.889 ± 3.478).However,the association of Val66Met with the personality traits of EPQ was uot significant in the study (P＞ 0.05).Furthermore,there was no a significant effect of the interaction between the genetic variant and Extraversion/Introversion on the curiosity of CAP (P =0.747 ).ConclusionThe present study suggests that Val66Met in BDNF contributes to creativity,but not to personality traits in the population.