COMT genotype is differentially associated with single trial variability of ERPs as a function of memory type

Hadiseh Nowparast Rostami, Christopher W.N. Saville*, Christoph Klein, Guang Ouyang, Werner Sommer, Changsong ZHOU, Andrea Hildebrandt

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Previous research on the association between intra-subject variability (ISV) in reaction times (RTs) and the Val158Met polymorphism of the catechol-o-methyltransferase gene (COMT; rs4680) has yielded mixed results. The present study compared the associations between COMT genotype and ISV in P3b latency measured during working and secondary memory tasks using residue iteration decomposition (RIDE) of single trial latencies. We compared the outcome of the present analyses with a previous analysis of the same data (N = 70, n-back tasks) using an alternative single-trial method. Additionally, we used RIDE to analyse the association between COMT genotype and ISV in an independent sample performing a different task (N = 91, face-recognition task). Analyses reconfirmed previous results from the n-back tasks, showing that Val alleles are associated with lower ISV. In the face recognition tasks, genotype interacted with task conditions, so Val homozygotes had higher ISV to unfamiliar faces than familiar ones but Met carriers showed no effect of familiarity. Moreover, in both datasets trial-by-trial RTs were predicted by P3b latencies. Therefore, the present data suggests that associations between COMT genotype and ISV depend on the type of cognitive processes, which may explain heterogeneity in previous results.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)209-219
Number of pages11
JournalBiological Psychology
Volume127
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2017

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Neuroscience(all)
  • Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology

User-Defined Keywords

  • COMT polymorphism
  • Event-related potentials
  • Intra-subject variability
  • Memory
  • Single trial analysis

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