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Disclosure of traumas and psychosomatic processes. Hemispheric asymmetry in stress processing in rat prefrontal cortex and the role of mesocortical dopamine. Developmental changes of prefrontal activation in humans: a near-infrared spectroscopy study of preschool children and adults. Individual differences in executive functions are almost entirely genetic in origin. Future work should aim to clarify further the effect of stress on neuronal systems that are known to be vulnerable in mental health disorders such as schizophrenia and more specifically what the impact of this might be on cognitive function. There was no significant effect of COMT Val158Met polymorphism, nor interaction with ELS, on any of the cognitive test outcomes (p > 0.05 in all cases).Ĭonclusion: This study supports and extends the previous findings that DRD2 C957T significantly impacts on the performance across different cognitive function tests in healthy adults and shows for the first time that some of these effects may be mediated through the impact of childhood traumatic events. A significant genotype-ELS interaction was found in the measures of target sensitivity and the number of errors made in the RVP test (p = 0.040, and p = 0.005, respectively), with CC carriers who had experienced ELS exhibiting less sensitivity and making more errors compared to those who had not experienced ELS. Results: CC carriers of the DRD2 C957T polymorphism made significantly more errors in the SWM test (p = 0.011), solved fewer problems on first choice in the OTS test (p = 0.020) and were more sensitive to the target sequences in the RVP test (p = 0.027) compared to other genotypes. The data were analysed using two-way analysis of covariance, with genotype and childhood trauma category (trauma/no trauma) as fixed factors and years of education and age as covariates of non-interest.
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Early life stress was assessed using the Childhood Traumatic Events Scale . The Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery was used to investigate spatial working memory (SWM), spatial planning and executive function (One Touch Stockings of Cambridge OTS), set-shifting and cognitive flexibility (Intra-Extradimensional Set Shift IED), and sustained attention (Rapid Visual Information Processing RVP). The genotype distributions did not deviate from Hardy–Weinberg Equilibrium (DRD2: 35 TT, 62 TC, 25 CC, n = 122, p = 0.80 COMT: 28 Met/Met, 62 Met/Val, 31 Val/Val, n = 121, p = 0.78), nor were there any significant differences between the genotype groups in demographic characteristics, stress levels, IQ estimates, or the number of early life stressful events (p > 0.05 in all cases). Methods: Our sample consisted of 122 healthy adult males (mean age 35.15 years, range 21 to 63 years), predominantly of European ancestry, recruited from Lincoln, UK, and the surrounding areas.
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However, increasing evidence suggests that environmental factors such as early life stress (ELS) interact with individual genes in affecting cognitive outcomes, and the prefrontal cortex (PFC) appears to be particularly susceptible to ELS due to its long maturation period and high density of glucocorticoid receptors and dopaminergic projections .Īims: This study aimed to investigate the role of two dopaminergic gene variants, the C957T polymorphism of the gene encoding dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2) and the Val158Met polymorphism of the gene encoding the enzyme catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), and the interaction of these polymorphisms with ELS in affecting the performance on a series of executive function tests mediated by the PFC. Background: Previous studies have demonstrated that prefrontally mediated cognitive processes have a strong genetic component .