This post is part of an ongoing exploration of  “mindfulness” biology and the neurobiology of reflecting inwardly on one’s mental life.  I hope it helps support the self-discovery aim of the blog.

In some ways, the 8 limbs of yoga described in the yoga sutras, seem a bit like a ladder, rather than a concentric set of outreached arms or spokes on a wheel.  As I practice this form of postures and mindfulness, it seems like I’m working toward something.  But what?  I certainly feel healthier, and also enjoy the satisfaction of getting slightly more able (ever so slightly) to shift into new postures – so am quite motivated to continue the pursuit.  Perhaps this is how yoga got started eons ago?   Just a pursuit that – by trial and error – left its practitioners feeling more healthy, relaxed and more in touch with their outer and inner worlds?  But where does this path lead, if anywhere?

I was intrigued by a report published in 1973 by an 8-day study carried out on the grounds of the Ravindra Nath Tagore Medical College and Hospital, Udaipur, India and subsequent letter, “The Yogic claim of voluntary control over the heart beat: an unusual demonstration” published in the American Heart Journal, Volume 86 Number 2.  Apparently, a local yogi named Yogi Satyamurti:

Yogi Satyamurti, a sparsely built man of about 60 years of age, remained confined in a small underground pit for 8 days in what according to him was a state of “Samadhi,” or deep meditation, with all bodily activity cut down to the barest minimum.

The medical researchers had the yogi’s heart and other physiological functions under constant watch via electrical recording leads, and watched as the yogi’s heart slowed down (their equipment registered a flatline) a remained so for several days.  Upon opening up the pit, the researchers found:

The Yogi was found sitting in the same posture. One of us immediately went in to examine him. He was in a stuporous condition and was very cold (oral temperature was 34.8O C) [the same temperature as the earth around him].

After a few hours, the yogi had recovered from the experience and displayed normal physiological and behavioral function – despite 8 days underground (air supposedly seeped in from the sides of the pit) with no food or human contact!

An amazing feat indeed – one that has some scientists wondering about the psychology and physiology that occurs when advanced meditators sink into (very deep) states.  John Ding-E Young and Eugene Taylor explored this in an article entitled, “Meditation as a Voluntary Hypometabolic State of Biological Estivation” published in News Physiol. Sci., Volume 13, June 1998.   They  suggest that humans have a kind of latent capacity to enter a kind of dormant or  hibernation-like state that is similar to other mammals and even certain primates.

Meditation, a wakeful hypometabolic state of parasympathetic dominance, is compared with other hypometabolic conditions, such as sleep, hypnosis, and the torpor of hibernation. We conclude that there are many analogies between the physiology of long-term meditators and hibernators across the phylogenetic scale. These analogies further reinforce the idea that plasticity of consciousness remains a key factor in successful biological adaptation.

Practice, practice, practice – towards an ability to engage a latent evolutionary adaptation? Such an adaptation – in humans – sounds hokey, but certainly an interesting idea worth exploring more in the future.

Pity the poor brain.  What a job it has!  Did you know that just to reach into a refrigerator and grab a glass of milk, involves at least 50 or so key muscles in the hand, arm and shoulder which can, in principle, lead to over 1,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations of muscle contractions?  Just so you know, this is 1,000 times MORE contraction possibilities than there are neurons in the brain (only a mere 1,000,000,000,000 neurons).  I’m sorry brain, I’ll keep my hands out of the fridge, I promise!

To accomplish this computational feat, Rodolfo R. Llinas and Sisir Roy in their paper entitled, “The ‘prediction imperative’ as the basis for self-awareness” [doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0309] suggest that brain has evolved a number of strategies.

For starters, the authors point out that the brain can lower the computational workload of controlling motor output by sending motor control signals in a non-continuous and pulsatile fashion.

“We see that the underlying nature of movement is not smooth and continuous as our voluntary movements overtly appear; rather, the execution of movement is a discontinuous series of muscle twitches, the periodicity of which is highly regular.”

This computational strategy has the added benefit of making it easier to bind and synchronize motor-movement signals with a constant flow of sensory input:

“a periodic control system may allow for input and output to be bound in time; in other words, this type of control system might enhance the ability of sensory inputs and descending motor command/controls to be integrated within the functioning motor apparatus as a whole.“

Another strategy is the use of memory for the purposes of prediction (actually, their paper is part of a special theme issue from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B entitled, Predictions in the brain: using our past to prepare for the future).  The authors describe the way in which neural circuits in the body and brain are inherently good at learning and storing information which makes them very good at using that information for making predictions and pre-prepared plans for what to do with expected incoming sensory inputs.  These neural mechanisms may also help reduce computational loads associated with moving and coordinating the body.  Interestingly, the authors note,

“while prediction is localized in the CNS, it is a distributed function and does not have a single location within the brain. What is the repository of predictive function? The answer lies in what we call the self, i.e. the self is the centralization of the predictive imperative.  The self is not born out of the realm of consciousness—only the noticing of it is (i.e. self-awareness).”  Here’s a link to Llinas’ book on where the “self” resides.

Lastly, the authors suggest that the genome might encode certain structural and functional aspects of neural development that create a bias for certain types of computation and prime neural networks with a Bayesian type of prior knowledge.  Their idea is akin to an organism being “experience expectant” rather than a pure blank slate that has to learn every stimulus-response contingency by trial-and-error.  To support their notion of the role of the genome, the authors cite a 2003 study from the Yonas Lab on the development of depth perception.  Another related study is covered here.

Methinks that genetic variants might someday be understood in terms of how they bias computational processes.  Something to shoot for in the decades to come!

Obviously, Wolfe was a gifted artist, despite whatever psychiatric diagnosis was suggested at the time.  Nevertheless, clinical psychiatrists might be quick to point out that such work reflects the presence of an underlying thought disorder (loss of abstraction ability, tangentiality, loose associations, derailment, thought blocking, overinclusive thinking, etc., etc.) – despite the undeniable aesthetic beauty in the work.  As an ardent fan of such art,  it made me wonder just how “well ordered” my own thoughts might be.  Given to being rather forgetful and distractable, I suspect my thinking process is just sufficiently well ordered to perform the routine tasks of day-to-day living, but perhaps not a whole lot more so.  Is this bad or good?  Who knows.

However, Krug et al., in their recent paper, “The effect of Neuregulin 1 on neural correlates of episodic memory encoding and retrieval” [doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.062] do note that the brains of unaffected relatives of persons with mental illness show subtle differences in various patterns of activation.  It seems that when individuals are using their brains to encode information for memory storage, unaffected relatives show greater activation in areas of the frontal cortex compared to unrelated subjects.  This so-called encoding process during episodic memory is very important for a healthy memory system and its dysfunction is correlated with thought disorders and other aspects of cognitive dysfunction.  Krug et al., proceed to explore this encoding process further and ask if a well-known schizophrenia risk variant (rs35753505 C vs. T) in the neuregulin-1 gene might underlie this phenomenon.  To do this, they asked 34 TT, 32 TC and 28 CC individuals to perform a memory (of faces) game whilst laying in an MRI scanner.

The team reports that there were indeed differences in brain activity during both the encoding (storage) and retrieval (recall) portions of the task – that were both correlated with genotype – and also in which the CC risk genotype was correlated with more (hyper-) activation.  Some of the brain areas that were hyperactivated during encoding and associated with CC genotype were the left middle frontal gyrus (BA 9), the bilateral fusiform gyrus and the left middle occipital gyrus (BA 19).  The left middle occipital gyrus showed gene associated-hyperactivation during recall.  So it seems, that healthy individuals can carry risk for mental illness and that their brains may actually function slightly differently.

As an ardent fan of Art Brut, I confess I hoped I would carry the CC genotype, but alas, my 23andme profile shows a boring TT genotype.  No wonder my artwork sucks.  More on NRG1 here.

** PODCAST accompanies this post**

I have a little boy who loves to run and jump and scream and shout – a lot.  And by this, I mean running – at full speed and smashing his head into my gut,  jumping – off the couch onto my head,  screaming – spontaneous curses and R-rated body parts and bodily functions.  I hope you get the idea.  Is this normal? or (as I oft imagine) will I soon be sitting across the desk from a school psychologist pitching me the merits of an ADHD diagnosis and medication?

Of course, when it comes to behavior, there is not a distinct line one can cross from normal to abnormal.  Human behavior is complex, multi-dimensional and greatly interpreted through the lens of culture.  Our present culture is highly saturated by mass-marketing, making it easy to distort a person’s sense of “what’s normal” and create demand for consumer products that folks don’t really need (eg. psychiatric diagnoses? medications?).   Anyhow, its tough to know what’s normal.  This is an important issue to consider for those (mass-marketing hucksters?) who might be inclined to promote genetic data as “hard evidence” for illness, disorder or abnormality of some sort.

With this in mind, I really enjoyed a recent paper by Stollstorff et al., “Neural response to working memory load varies by dopamine transporter genotype in children” [doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.104] who asked how the brains of healthy children functioned, even though they carry a genotype that has been widely associated with the risk of ADHD.  Healthy children who carry genetic risk for ADHD. Hmm, might this be my boy?

The researchers looked at a 9- vs. 10-repeat VNTR polymorphism in the 3′-UTR of the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1).  This gene – which encodes the very protein that is targeted by so many ADHD medications – influences the re-uptake of dopamine from the synaptic cleft.  In the case of 10/10 genotypes, it seems that DAT1 is more highly expressed, thus leading to more re-uptake and hence less dopamine in the synaptic cleft.  Generally, dopamine is needed to enhance the signal/noise of neurotransmission, so – at the end of the day – the 10/10 genotype is considered less optimal than the 9/9-repeat genotype.  As noted by the researchers, the ADHD literature shows that the 10-repeat allele, not the 9-repeat, is most often associated with ADHD.

The research team asked these healthy children (typically developing children between 7 and 12 years of age) to perform a so-called N-back task which requires that children remember words that are presented to them one-at-a-time.  Each time a new word is presented, the children had to decide whether that word was the same as the previous word (1-back) or the previous, previous word (2-back).  Its a maddening task and places an extreme demand on neural circuits involved in active maintenance of information (frontal cortex) as well as inhibition of irrelevant information that occurs during updating (basal ganglia circuits).

As the DAT1 protein is widely expressed in the basal ganglia, the research team asked where in the brain was variation in the DAT1 (9- vs. 10-repeat) associated with neural activity?  and where was there a further difference between 1-back and 2-back?  Indeed, the team finds that brain activity in many regions of the basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, substantia nigra & subthalamic nucleus) were associated with genetic variation in DAT1.  Neat!  the gene may be exerting an influence on brain function (and behavior) in healthy children, even though they do not carry a diagnosis.  Certainly, genes are not destiny, even though they do influence brain and behavior.

What was cooler to me though, is the way the investigators examined the role of genetic variation in the 1-back (easy or low load condition) vs. 2-back (harder, high-load condition) tasks.  Their data shows that there was less of an effect of genotype on brain activation in the easy tasks.  Rather, only when the task was hard, did it become clear that the basal ganglia in the 10/10 carriers was lacking the necessary brain activation needed to perform the more difficult task.  Thus, the investigators reveal that the genetic risk may not be immediately apparent under conditions where heavy “loads” or demands are not placed on the brain.  Cognitive load matters when interpreting genetic data!

This result made me think that genes in the brain might be a lot like genes in muscles.  Individual differences in muscle strength are not associated with genotype when kids are lifting feathers.  Only when kids are actually training and using their muscles, might one start to see that some genetically advantaged kids have muscles that strengthen faster than others.  Does this mean there is a “weak muscle gene” – yes, perhaps.  But with the proper training regimen, children carrying such a “weak muscle gene” would be able to gain plenty of strength.

I guess its off to the mental and physical gyms for me and my son.

** PODCAST accompanies this post** also, here’s a link to the Vaidya lab!

Here’s a great paper, “Association between ADORA2A and DRD2 Polymorphisms and Caffeine-Induced Anxiety” [doi: 10.1038/npp.2008.17] wherein polymorphisms in the adenosine A2A receptor (ADORA2A encodes the protein that caffeine binds to and antagonizes) – as well as the dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2 encodes a protein whose downstream signals are normally counteracted by A2A receptors) — show associations with anxiety after the consumption of 150mg of caffeine (about an average cup of coffee – much less than the super-size, super-rich cups that Starbucks sells).  The variants, rs5751876 (T-allele), rs2298383 (T-allele) and rs4822492 (G-allele) from the ADORA2A gene as well as rs1110976 (-/G genotype) from the DRD2 gene showed significant increases in anxiety in a test population of 102 otherwise-healthy light-moderate regular coffee drinkers.

My own 23andMe data only provides a drop of information suggesting I’m protected from the anxiety-promoting effects.  Nevertheless, I’ll avoid the super-sizes.
rs5751876 (T-allele)  C/C – less anxiety
rs2298383 (T-allele) – not covered
rs4822492 (G-allele) – not covered
rs1110976 (-/G genotype) – not covered

If you have a minute, check out this “Autism Sensory Overload Simulation” video to get a feel for the perceptual difficulties experienced by people with autism spectrum disorders.  A recent article, “Critical Period Plasticity Is Disrupted in the Barrel Cortex of Fmr1 Knockout Mice” [doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2010.01.024] provides some clues to the cellular mechanisms that are involved in this phenomenon.  The authors examined the developing somatosensory cortex in lab mice who carry a mutation in a gene called FMR1.  The normal function of this gene is to help synapses mature and optimize their strength through a process known as activity-dependent plasticity.  This a kind of “use-it-or-lose-it” neural activity that is important when you are practicing and practicing to learn something new – say, like riding a bike, or learning a new language.  Improvements in performance that come from “using” the circuits in the brain are correlated with optimized synaptic connections – via a complex set of biochemical reactions (eg. AMPA receptor trafficking).

When FMR1 is not functioning, neuronal connections (in this case, synapses that connect the thalamus to the somatosensory cortex) cannot mature and develop properly.  This wreaks havoc in the developing brain where maturation can occur in successive critical periods – where the maturation of one circuit is needed to ensure the subsequent development of another.  Hence, the authors suggest, the type of sensory overload reported in the autism spectrum disorders may be related to a similar type of developmental anomaly in the somatosensory cortex.

Everyone has a birthday right. Its the day you (your infant self) popped into the world and started breathing, right?  But what about the day “you” were born – that is – “you” in the more philosophical, Jungian, spiritual, social, etc. kind of a way when you became aware of being in some ways apart from others and the world around you.  In her 1997 paper, “The Basal Ganglia and Cognitive Pattern Generators“, Professor Ann Graybiel writes,

The link between intent and action may also have a quite specific function during development. This set of circuits may provide part of the neural mechanism for building up cognitive patterns involving recognition of the self. It is well documented that, as voluntary motor behaviors develop and as feedback about the consequences of these behaviors occurs, the perceptuomotor world of the infant develops (Gibson 1969). These same correlations among intent, action, and consequence also offer a simple way for the young organism to acquire the distinction between actively initiated and passively received events. As a result, the infant can acquire the recognition of self as actor. The iterative nature of many basal ganglia connections and the apparent involvement of the basal ganglia in some forms of learning could provide a mechanism for this development of self-awareness.

As Professor Graybiel relates the “self” to function in the basal-ganglia and the so-called cortico-thalamic basal-ganglia loops – a set of parallel circuits that help to properly filter internal mental activity into specific actions and executable decisions – I got a kick out of a paper that describes how the development of the basal-ganglia can go awry for cells that are born at certain times.

Check out the paper, “Modular patterning of structure and function of the striatum by retinoid receptor signaling” by Liao et al.   It reveals that mice who lack a certain retinoic acid receptor gene (RARbeta) have a type of defective neurogenesis in late-born cells that make up a part of the basal ganglia (striatum) known as a striosome.  Normally, the authors say, retinoic acid helps to expand a population of late-born striosomal cells, but in the RARbeta mutant mice, the rostral striosomes remain under-developed.   When given dopaminergic stimulation, these mutant mice showed slightly less grooming and more sterotypic behaviors.

So when was “my self’s” birthday?  Was it when these late-born striosomal cells were, umm, born?  Who knows, but I’m glad my retinoic acid system was intact.

For a great many reasons, research on mental illness is focused on the frontal cortex.  Its just a small part of the brain, and certainly, many things can go wrong in other places during brain/cognitive development, but, it remains a robust finding, that when the frontal cortex is not working well, individuals have difficulties in regulating thoughts and emotions.  Life is difficult enough to manage, let alone without a well functioning frontal cortex.  So its no surprise that many laboratories look very closely at how this region develops prenatally and during childhood.

One of the more powerful genetic methods is the analysis of gene expression via microarrays (here is a link to a tutorial on this technology).  When this technology is coupled with extremely careful histological analysis and dissection of cortical circuits in the frontal cortex, it begins to become possible to begin to link changes in gene expression with the physiological properties of specific cells and local circuits in the frontal cortex. The reason this is an exciting pursuit is because the mammalian neocortex is organized in a type of layered fashion wherein 6 major layers have different types of connectivity and functionality.  The developmental origins of this functional specificity are thought to lie in a process known as radial migration (here is a video of a neuron as it migrates radially and finds its place in the cortical hierarchy).  As cells are queued out of the ventricular zone, and begin their migration to the cortical surface, they are exposed to all sorts of growth factors and morphogens that help them differentiate and form the proper connectivities.  Thus, the genes that regulate this process are of keen interest to understanding normal and abnormal cognitive development.

Here’s an amazing example of this – 2 papers entitled, “Infragranular gene expression disturbances in the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia: Signature of altered neural development?” [doi:10.1016/j.nbd.2009.12.013] and “Molecular markers distinguishing supragranular and infragranular layers in the human prefrontal cortex [doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2007.05396.x] both by Dominique Arion and colleagues.  In both papers, the authors ask, “what genes are differentially expressed in different layers of the cortex?”.  This is a powerful line of inquiry since the different layers of cortex are functionally different in terms of their connectivity.  For example, layers II-III (the so-called supragranular layers) are known to connect mainly to other cortical neurons – which is different functionally than layers V-VI (the so-called infragranular layers) that connect mainly to the striatum (layer V) and thalamus (layer VI).  Thus, if there are genes whose expression is unique to a layer, then one has a clue as to how that gene might contribute to normal/abnormal information processing.

The authors hail from a laboratory that is well-known for work over many years on fine-scaled histological analysis of the frontal cortex at the University of Pittsburgh and used a method called, laser capture microdissection, where post-mortem sections of human frontal cortex (area 46) were cut to separate the infragraular layer from the supragranular layer.  The mRNA from these tissue sections was then used for DNA microarray hybridization.  Various controls, replicate startegies and in-situ tissue hybridizations were then employed to validate the initial microarray results.

In first paper, the where the authors compare infra vs. supragranular layers, they report that 40 genes were more highly expressed in the supragranular layers (HOP, CUTL2 and MPPE1 were among the most enriched) and 29 genes were highly expressed in the infragranular layers (ZNF312, CHN2, HS3ST2 were among the most enriched).  Other differentially expressed genes included several that have previously been implicated in cortical layer formation such as RLN, TLX-NR2E1, SEMA3E, PCP4, SERPINE2, NR2F2/ARP1, PCDH8, WIF1, JAG1, MBP.  Amazing!! A handful of genes that seem to label subpopulations of projection neurons in the frontal cortex.  Polymorphic markers for these genes would surely be powerful tools for imaging-genetic studies on cognitive development.

In the second paper, the authors compare infra vs. supragranular gene expression in post-mortem brains from patients with schizophrenia and healthy matched controls. Using the same methods, the team reports both supra- and infragranular gene expression changes in schizophrenia (400 & 1200 differences respectively) – more than 70% of the differences appearing to be reductions in gene expression in schizophrenia. Interestingly, the team reports that the genes that were differentially expressed in the infragranular layers provided sufficient information to discriminate between cases and controls, whilst the gene expression differences in the supragranular layers did not.  More to the point, the team finds that 51 genes that were differentially expressed in infra- vs. supragranular expression were also differentially expressed in cases vs. controls  (many of these are also found to be associated in population genetic association studies of schiz vs. control as well!).  Thus, the team has identified layer (function) -specific genes that are associated with schizophrenia.  These genes, the ones enriched in the infragranular layers especially, seem to be at the crux of a poorly functioning frontal cortex.

The authors point to 3 such genes (SEMA3E, SEMA6D, SEMA3C) who happen to members of the same gene family – the semaphorin gene family.  This gene family is very important for the neuronal guidance (during radial migration), morphology, pruning and other processes where cell shape and position are regulated.  The authors propose that the semaphorins might act as “integrators” of various forms of wiring during development and in adulthood.  More broadly, the authors provide a framework to understand how the development of connectivity on the frontal cortex is regulated by genetic factors – indeed, many suspected genetic risk factors play a role in the developmental pathways the authors have focused on.

***PODCAST ACCOMPANIES THIS POST***

In his undergraduate writings while a student at Harvard in the early 1900′s E. E. Cummings quipped that, “Japanese poetry is different from Western poetry in the same way as silence is different from a voice”.  Isabelle Alfandary explores this theme in Cummings’ poetry in her essay, “Voice and Silence in E. E. Cummings’ Poetry“,  giving some context to how the poet explored the meanings and consequences of voice and silence.  Take for example, his poem “silence”

silence

.is
a
looking

bird:the

turn
ing;edge, of
life

(inquiry before snow

e.e. cummings

Lately, it seems that the brain imaging community is similarly beginning to explore the meanings and consequences of the brain when it speaks (activations whilst performing certain tasks) and when it rests quietly.  As Cummings beautifully intuits the profoundness of silence and rest,  I suppose he might have been intrigued by just how very much the human brain is doing when we are not speaking, reading, or engaged in a task. Indeed, a community of brain imagers seem to be finding that the brain at rest has quite a lot to say – moreso in people who carry certain forms of genetic variation (related posts here & here).

A paper by Perrson and colleagues “Altered deactivation in individuals with genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease” [doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.01.026] asked individuals to do something rather ordinary – to pay attention to words – and later to then respond to the meaning of these words (a semantic categorization task). This simple endeavor, which, in many ways uses the very same thought processes as used when reading poetry, turns out to activate regions of the temporal lobe such as the hippocampus and other connected structures such as the posterior cingulate cortex.  These brain regions are known to lose function over the course of life in some individuals and underlie their age-related difficulties in remembering names and recalling words, etc.  Indeed, some have described Alzheimer’s disease as a tragic descent into a world of silence.

In their recordings of brain activity of subjects (60 healthy participants aged 49-79), the team noticed something extraordinary.  They found that there were differences not in how much the brain activates during the task – but rather in how much the brain de-activates – when participants simply stare into a blank screen at a small point of visual fixation.  The team reports that individuals who carry at least one copy of epsilon-4 alleles of the APOE gene showed less de-activation of their their brain (in at least 6 regions of the so-called default mode network) compared to individuals who do not carry genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease.  Thus the ability of the brain to rest – or transition in and out of the so-called default mode network – seems impaired in individuals who carry higher genetic risk.

So, I shall embrace the poetic wisdom of E. E. Cummings and focus on the gaps, empty spaces, the vastness around me, the silences, and learn to bring my brain to rest.  And in so doing, perhaps avoid an elderly descent into silence.

***PODCAST ACCOMPANIES THIS POST***

Here’s an example.  One of the most well studied circuits/networks/systems in the field of cognitive science are so-called basal-ganglia-thalamcortical loops.  These loops have been implicated in a great many forms of cognitive function involving the regulation of everything from movement, emotion and memory to reasoning ability.  Not surprisingly, neuroimaging studies on cognitive function almost always find activations in this circuitry.  In many cases, the data from neuroimaging and other methodologies suggests that one portion of this circuitry – the frontal cortex – plays a role in the representation of such aspects as task rules, relationships between task variables and associations between possible choices and outcomes.  This would be sort of like the “thinking” part of our mental life where we ruminate on all the possible choices we have and the ins and outs of what each choice has to offer.  Have you ever gone into a Burger King and – even though you’ve known for 20 years what’s on the menu – you freeze up and become lost in thought just as its your turn to place your order?  Your frontal cortex is at work!

The other aspect of this circuitry is the subcortical basla ganglia, which seems to play the downstream role of processing all that ruminating activity going on in the frontal cortex and filtering it down into a single action.  This is a simple fact of life – that we can be thinking about dozens of things at a time, but we can only DO 1 thing at a time.  Alas, we must choose something at Burger King and place our order.  Indeed, one of the hallmarks of mental illness seems to be that this circuitry functions poorly – which may be why individuals have difficulty in keeping their thoughts and actions straight – the thinking clearly and acting clearly aspect of healthy mental life.  Certainly, in neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s Disease and Huntington’s Disease, where this circuitry is damaged, the ability to think and move one’s body in a coordinated fashion is disrupted.

Thus, there are at least 2 main components to a complex system/circuits/networks that are involved in many aspects of learning and decision making in everyday life.  Therefore, if we wanted to understand how a gene – that is expressed in both portions of this circuitry – inflenced our mental life, we would have to interpret its function in relation to each specific portion of the circuitry.  In otherwords, the gene might effect the prefrontal (thinking) circuitry in one way and the basla-ganglia (action-selection) circuitry in a different way.  Since we’re all familiar with the experience of walking in to a Burger King and seeing folks perplexed and frozen as they stare at the menu, perhaps its not too difficult to imagine that a gene might differentially influence the ruminating process (hmm, what shall I have today?) and the action selection (I’ll take the #3 combo) aspect of this eveyday occurrance (for me, usually 2 times per week).

Nice idea you say, but does the idea flow from solid science?  Well, check out the recent paper from Cindy M. de Frias and colleagues “Influence of COMT Gene Polymorphism on fMRI-assessed Sustained and Transient Activity during a Working Memory Task.” [PMID: 19642882].  In this paper, the authors probed the function of a single genetic variant (rs4680 is the Methionine/Valine variant of the dopamine metabolizing COMT gene) on cognitive functions that preferentially rely on the prefronal cortex as well as mental operations that rely heavily on the basal-ganglia.  As an added bonus, the team also probed the function of the hippocampus – yet a different set of circuits/networks that are important for healthy mental function.  OK, so here is 1 gene who is functioning  within 3 separable (yet connected) neural networks!

The team focused on a well-studied Methionine/Valine variant of the dopamine metabolizing COMT gene which is broadly expessed across the pre-frontal (thinking) part of the circuitry and the basal-ganglia part of the circuitry (action-selection) as well as the hippocampus.  The team performed a neuroimaging study wherein participants (11 Met/Met and 11 Val/Val) subjects had to view a series of words presented one-at-a-time and respond if they recalled that a word was a match to the word presented 2-trials beforehand  (a so-called “n-back task“).  In this task, each of the 3 networks/circuits (frontal cortex, basal-ganglia and hippocampus) are doing somewhat different computations – and have different needs for dopamine (hence COMT may be doing different things in each network).  In the prefrontal cortex, according to a theory proposed by Robert Bilder and colleagues [doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1300542] the need is for long temporal windows of sustained neuronal firing – known as tonic firing (neuronal correlate with trying to “keep in mind” all the different words that you are seeing).  The authors predicted that under conditions of tonic activity in the frontal cortex, dopamine release promotes extended tonic firing and that Met/Met individuals should produce enhanced tonic activity.  Indeed, when the authors looked at their data and asked, “where in the brain do we see COMT gene associations with extended firing? they found such associations in the frontal cortex (frontal gyrus and cingulate cortex)!

Down below, in the subcortical networks, a differerent type of cognitive operation is taking place.  Here the cells/circuits are involved in the action selection (press a button) of whether the word is a match and in the working memory updating of each new word.  Instead of prolonged, sustained “tonic” neuronal firing, the cells rely on fast, transient “phasic” bursts of activity.  Here, the modulatory role of dopamine is expected to be different and the Bilder et al. theory predicts that COMT Val/Val individuals would be more efficient at modulating the fast, transient form of cell firing required here.   Similarly, when the research team explored their genotype and brain activity data and asked, “where in the brain do we see COMT gene associations with transient firing? they found such associations in the right hippocampus.

Thus, what can someone who carries the Met/Met genotype at rs4680 say to their fellow Val/Val lunch-mate next time they visit a Burger King?  “I have the gene for obesity? or impulsivity? or “this” or “that”?  Perhaps not.  The gene influences different parts of each person’s neural networks in different ways.  The Met/Met having the advantage in pondering (perhaps more prone to annoyingly gaze at the menu forever) whist the Val/Val has the advantage in the action selecting (perhaps ordering promptly but not getting the best burger and fries combo).