Genes 2 Brains 2 Mind 2 Me

Image via Wikipedia Nowadays, as many folks peer into the vast tangled thicket of their own genetic code, they, as I, assuredly wonder what it all means and how best to ascertain their health risks. One core theme that emerges from repeated forays into one’s own data is that many of us carry a scads of genetic risk for illness, but somehow, find ourselves living rather normal, healthy lives. How can this be ? A recent example of this entails a C/T snp (c) located in the 5′ flanking region of the neuregulin 1 gene which has been repeatedly associated with schizophrenia. Axel Krug and colleagues recently reported in their paper, “Genetic variation in the schizophrenia-risk gene neuregulin1 correlates with differences in frontal brain activation in a working memory task in healthy individuals” that T/C variation at this snp is associated with activation of the frontal cortex in healthy individuals. Participants were asked to keep track of a series of events and respond to a particular event that happened “2 events ago” . These so-called n-back tasks are not easy for healthy folks, and demand a lot of mental focus – a neural process that depends heavily on circuits in the frontal cortex. Generally speaking, as the task becomes harder, more activity in the frontal cortex is needed to keep up. In this case, individuals with the TT genotype seemed to perform the task while using somewhat less activity in the frontal cortex, rather than the risk-bearing CC carriers. As someone who has tried and failed to succeed at these tasks many times before, I was sure I would be a CC, but the 23andMe data show me to be a non-risk carrying TT. Hmmm … maybe my frontal cortex is just underactive.