Polymorphism in the CHRNA4 gene is associated with rapid scene categorization performance

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• 作者：Yuichiro Kikuno (1)
  Tetsuro Matsunaga (2)
  Jun Saiki (1)
  
• 关键词：Scene categorization ; Individual differences ; CHRNA4 ; Attention
• 刊名：Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：October 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：75
• 期：7
• 页码：1427-1437
• 全文大小：
• 作者单位：Yuichiro Kikuno (1)
  Tetsuro Matsunaga (2)
  Jun Saiki (1)
  
  1. Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
  2. AJINOMOTO Integrative Research for Advanced Dieting, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
  
• ISSN：1943-393X

文摘

The CHRNA4 gene is known to be associated with individual differences in attention. However, its associations with other cognitive functions remain to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of genetic variations in CHRNA4 on rapid scene categorization by 100 healthy human participants. In Experiment 1, we also conducted the Attention Network Test (ANT) in order to examine whether the genetic effects could be accounted for by attention. CHRNA4 was genotyped as carrying the TT, CT, or CC allele. The scene categorization task required participants to judge whether the category of a scene image (natural or man-made) was consistent with a cue word displayed at the response phase. The targetask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) ranged from 13 to 93ms. In comparison with CC-allele carriers, CT- and TT-allele carriers responded more accurately at the long SOA (93ms) only during natural-scene categorization. In contrast, we observed no consistent association between CHRNA4 and the ANT, and no intertask correlation between scene categorization and the ANT. To validate our natural-scene categorization results, Experiment 2, carried out with an independent sample of 100 participants and a different stimulus set, successfully replicated the association between CHRNA4 genotypes and natural-scene categorization accuracy at long SOAs (67 and 93ms). Our findings demonstrate, for the first time, that genetic variations in CHRNA4 can moderately contribute to individual differences in natural-scene categorization performance.