A 9-nucleotide Ins/Del in ADRA2B modulates orientation of attention to facial expressions and emotional words

Abstract

Norepinephrine is involved in the arousal of attention and the treatment of affective disorders. Therefore, we hypothesized that adrenergic receptors underpinned individual differences in attention regulation and emotional processes of healthy populations. Here, we investigated to what extent the expression of ADRA2B, an adrenergic receptor, modulated attention regulation and emotional processes. We evaluated orientation of attention, emotion regulation, and pleasantness ratings of expressions and words in 665 college students, and then genotyped the +901 Ins/Del variants in ADRA2B of these participants. The results indicated that +901 Ins/Del significantly modulated orientation of attention to facial expressions and emotional words, such that the Del allele facilitated reorientation to the originally attended locations. However, this polymorphism exerted no significant effects on emotional regulation of attention and pleasantness ratings of emotional stimulus. These findings suggest that ADRA2B is closely related to the individual difference in human attention orientation, but not to the individual difference in emotional processing.

Attentional biases to emotional stimuli: Key components of the RDoC constructs of sustained threat and loss

“…For example, building from research suggesting that norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (NRIs), specifically reboxetine, may have similar effects on the neural mechanisms underlying attentional biases as those observed for SSRIs [Norbury et al, ; Harmer et al, ], researchers have examined genes that affect norepinephrine activity. For example, there is evidence that a nine base pair insertion/deletion polymorphism in the alpha‐2B adrenergic receptor ( ADRA2B ) is related to emotional memory and attentional biases, with carriers of the deletion variant exhibiting more biased processing of emotional stimuli [Todd et al, ; Markovic et al, ; Shoumin et al, ; Li et al, ].…”