Genes 2 Brains 2 Mind 2 Me

Image via Wikipedia To go out tonight or stay home? Hillary or Barack? Curly fries or onion rings? How do I make these important choices and why will others decide differently? Although there are many reasons for not stressing-out and over-thinking one’s decisions (except for really important choices like curly fry vs. onion ring), it turns out that variation in your genome, in particular, 3 dopaminergic genes (DARPP-32, DRD2 and COMT: rs907094, rs1800496, rs4680) are influencing your tendency to ‘go for it’ or not to go for it. Frank and colleagues, in their paper, “Genetic triple dissociation reveals multiple roles for dopamine in reinforcement learning“, give an in-depth treatment of the neurobiology underlying decision making and reinforcement learning. After carefully reviewing the basic biology of dopaminergic synapses and selecting 3 candidate genetic variants, they find that each is associated with an independent aspect of decision making in a learning paradigm. The paper is an excellent example of how genetic variation can be linked to specific neural processes. Now bring on the curly fries – no wait – the onion rings.