Heritability and molecular genetic basis of acoustic startle eye blink and affectively modulated startle response: a genome-wide association study.

ABSTRACT: Acoustic startle responses have been studied extensively in relation to individual differences and psychopathology. We examined three indices of the blink response in a picture-viewing paradigm-overall startle magnitude across all picture types, and aversive and pleasant modulation scores-in 3,323 twins and parents. Biometric models and molecular genetic analyses showed that half the variance in overall startle was due to additive genetic effects. No single nucleotide polymorphism was genome-wide significant, but GRIK3 produced a significant effect when examined as part of a candidate gene set. In contrast, emotion modulation scores showed little evidence of heritability in either biometric or molecular genetic analyses. However, in a genome-wide scan, PARP14 produced a significant effect

SUBMITTER: Vaidyanathan U 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4231542 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature