Home » PNB Genetics News & Research » Converging Genetic and Functional Brain Imaging Evidence Links Neuronal Excitability to Working Memory, Psychiatric Disease, and Brain Activity

Converging Genetic and Functional Brain Imaging Evidence Links Neuronal Excitability to Working Memory, Psychiatric Disease, and Brain Activity

By: Angela Heck, Matthias Fastenrath1, and Sandra Ackermann et al.
Neuron, available online February 13, 2014

Working memory, the capacity of actively maintaining task-relevant information during a cognitive task, is a heritable trait. Working memory deficits are characteristic for many psychiatric disorders. We performed genome-wide gene set enrichment analyses in multiple independent data sets of young and aged cognitively healthy subjects (n = 2,824) and in a large schizophrenia case-control sample (n = 32,143). The voltage-gated cation channel activity gene set, consisting of genes related to neuronal excitability, was robustly linked to performance in working memory-related tasks across ages and to schizophrenia. Functional brain imaging in 707 healthy participants linked this gene set also to working memory-related activity in the parietal cortex and the cerebellum. Gene set analyses may help to dissect the molecular underpinnings of cognitive dimensions, brain activity, and psychopathology.

Click here for full text