Dysbindin-1 genotype effects on emotional working memory

• Published in: Molecular psychiatry Vol. 16; no. 2; pp. 145 - 155
• Main Authors: Wolf, C, Jackson, M C, Kissling, C, Thome, J, Linden, D E J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.02.2011; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/378/1457; 631/378/1595/1636; 631/378/2583; Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Behavioral Sciences; Biological and medical sciences; Biological Psychology; Biosynthesis; Brain - blood supply; Brain - physiology; Brain Mapping; Care and treatment; Carrier Proteins - genetics; Chi-Square Distribution; Cognition; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive ability; Cortex (frontal); Cortex (temporal); Dopamine; Dopamine receptors; Dysbindin; Dystrophin-Associated Proteins; Emotions; Emotions - physiology; Face; Female; Functional Laterality; Gene Frequency - genetics; Genetic aspects; Genetics; Genotype; Genotype & phenotype; Genotypes; Glutamatergic transmission; Hippocampus; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Kinases; Linear Models; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Male; Medical sciences; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Memory; Memory, Short-Term - physiology; Mental disorders; Mental task performance; Middle Aged; Nervous system; Neuroimaging; Neuropsychological Tests; Neurosciences; Neurotransmission; original-article; Oxygen - blood; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Pharmacotherapy; Photic Stimulation - methods; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide - genetics; Proteins; Psychiatry; Psychological aspects; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Psychoses; Recognition, Psychology; Schizophrenia; Short term memory; Young Adult; United Kingdom; United Kingdom > UK; emotional faces; schizophrenia; dysbindin; working memory; genetic imaging; Affect affectivity; Schizophrenia; Genotype; Cognition; Emotion emotionality; Genetic determinism; Psychosis; Imaging; Genetics; Working memory; Face; Facial expression
• ISSN: 1359-4184; 1476-5578; 1476-5578
• DOI: 10.1038/mp.2009.129

We combined functional imaging and genetics to investigate the behavioral and neural effects of a dysbindin-1 ( DTNBP1 ) genotype associated with the expression level of this important synaptic protein, which has been implicated in schizophrenia. On a working memory (WM) task for emotional faces, participants with the genotype related to increased expression showed higher WM capacity for happy faces compared with the genotype related to lower expression. Activity in several task-related brain areas with known DTNBP1 expression was increased, including hippocampal, temporal and frontal cortex. Although these increases occurred across emotions, they were mostly observed in areas whose activity correlated with performance for happy faces. This suggests effects of variability in DTNBP1 on emotion-specific WM capacity and region-specific task-related brain activation in humans. Synaptic effects of DTNBP1 implicate that altered dopaminergic and/or glutamatergic neurotransmission may be related to the increased WM capacity. The combination of imaging and genetics thus allows us to bridge the gap between the cellular/molecular and systems/behavioral level and extend the cognitive neuroscience approach to a comprehensive biology of cognition.