Association of rapid scene categorization with a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor gene polymorphism(Summary of Awarded Presentation at the 31st Annual Meeting)

Abstract

In humans, a number of studies have found that the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs1O44396 on the CHRNA4 gene influences individual differences in attention. However, its association with other cognitive functions remains to be clarified. In the present study, we explored the effects of genetic variations in CHRNA4 on rapid scene categorization by 100 healthy human participants. The rapid scene categorization task required participants to judge whether the category of a scene image (Natural or Man-Made) was compatible with a cue word presented at the re- sponse phase. The target-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) ranged from 13 ms to 93 ms. Heterozygotes and homozygotes for the CHRNA4 T allele responded more accurately at long SOAs (67 ms and 93 ms) compared with non-T allele carriers, but only with the Natural scene category. Our discoveries provide evidence that genetic variations in CHRNA4 can moderately contribute to natural scene categorization performance.