The influence of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor val66met Polymorphism on the degree of long-term potentiation of human visual evoked potentials predicts memory performance.
-
1
University of Auckland, School of Psychology, New Zealand
A single nucleotide polymorphism of the human BDNF (Val66Met) gene may account for much of the variation in human memory performance. BDNF may influence memory via either a modulation of acute plasticity (i.e. long-term potentiation (LTP)), or a chronic influence on developing neural systems. Until recently, the link between BDNF and LTP has been difficult to assess in humans. Here we employ our recently developed human LTP paradigm to assess the effects of BDNF polymorphism on LTP and memory. We show that subjects carrying the Met allele had significantly lower levels of LTP than those homozygous for the Val allele, and performed significantly less well in a test of visual memory. Further, the degree of LTP was significantly correlated with the index of visual memory. Thus, polymorphism in the BDNF gene is associated with differences in the degree of acute neural plasticity (LTP), which predicts differences in human mnemonic ability.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from the NIH (Grant no. R01 MH064508) and the NZ Royal Society (Marsden Grant #06-UoA-077).
Keywords:
BDNF Val66Met,
Long-Term Potentiation,
event-related potential (ERP),
Memory,
visual memory,
episodic memory
Conference:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 29 Nov - 2 Dec, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Memory
Citation:
Kirk
IJ
(2012). The influence of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor val66met Polymorphism on the degree of long-term potentiation of human visual evoked potentials predicts memory performance..
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2012.208.00057
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
25 Oct 2012;
Published Online:
07 Nov 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Prof. Ian J Kirk, University of Auckland, School of Psychology, Auckland, Auckland, 1142, New Zealand, i.kirk@auckland.ac.nz