AUTHOR=Lundwall Rebecca A. , Rasmussen Claudia G. 

TITLE=MAOA Influences the Trajectory of Attentional Development

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2016

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00424

DOI=10.3389/fnhum.2016.00424

ISSN=1662-5161

ABSTRACT=<p>Attention is vital to success in all aspects of life (Meck and Benson, <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B102">2002</xref>; Erickson et al., <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B46">2015</xref>), hence it is important to identify biomarkers of later attentional problems early enough to intervene. Our objective was to determine if any of 11 genes (<italic>APOE, BDNF</italic>, <italic>HTR4, CHRNA4, COMT, DRD4, IGF2, MAOA</italic>, <italic>SLC5A7</italic>, <italic>SLC6A3</italic>, and <italic>SNAP25</italic>) predicted the trajectory of attentional development within the same group of children between infancy and childhood. We recruited follow up participants from children who participated as infants in visual attention studies and used a similar task at both time points. Using multilevel modeling, we associated changes in the participant’s position in the distribution of scores in infancy to his/her position in childhood with genetic markers on each of 11 genes. While all 11 genes predicted reaction time (RT) residual scores, only Monoamine oxidase A (<italic>MAOA</italic>) had a significant interaction including time point. We conclude that the <italic>MAOA</italic> single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs1137070 is useful in predicting which girls are likely to develop slower RTs on an attention task between infancy and childhood. This early identification is likely to be helpful in early intervention.</p>