The DRD4 gene modulates anxiety effects on top-down attention

What is it about?

It is well-known that anxiety affects cognition. According to M. Eysenck et al. (2007), anxiety favors automatic attention and disrupts effortful task-related attention. However, considerable individual differences exist as regard to this influence. Given that effortful attention is controlled by prefrontal cortex, we investigated whether genetically determined peculiarities in functioning of this brain region might account for such variability.

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Why is it important?

Now determining individual genotypes is becoming more and more available. Our results suggest that genotyping may be helpful for predicting anxiety effect on cognition.