Nicotinic receptor gene CHRNA4 interacts with processing load in attention.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Pharmacological studies suggest that cholinergic neurotransmission mediates increases in attentional effort in response to high processing load during attention demanding tasks [1].

Methodology/principal findings

In the present study we tested whether individual variation in CHRNA4, a gene coding for a subcomponent in α4β2 nicotinic receptors in the human brain, interacted with processing load in multiple-object tracking (MOT) and visual search (VS). We hypothesized that the impact of genotype would increase with greater processing load in the MOT task. Similarly, we predicted that genotype would influence performance under high but not low load in the VS task. Two hundred and two healthy persons (age range  =  39-77, Mean  =  57.5, SD  =  9.4) performed the MOT t

SUBMITTER: Espeseth T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3008676 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature