Altered Episodic Memory in Introverted Young Adults Carrying the BDNFMet Allele

Abstract

While most studies have been interested in the distinct, predisposing roles of the common BDNF Val66Met variant and extraversion personality traits on episodic memory, very few studies have looked at the synergistic effects of genetic and personality factors to account for cognitive variance. This is surprising considering recent reports challenging the long-held belief that the BDNFMet variant negatively impacts cognitive function. A total of 75 young healthy adults (26 of them carried at least one copy of the BDNFMet allele) took part in this study consisting of genetic profiling from saliva, personality assessment using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) and a short battery of neuropsychological tests. An ANOVA revealed that BDNFMet carriers were significantly less extraverted than BDNFVal carriers (F1,73 = 9.54; p < 0.01; ηp2 = 0.126). Moreover, extraversion was found to significantly moderate the relationship between the BDNF genotype and episodic memory performance (p = 0.03). Subsequent correlational analyses yielded a strong and significant correlation (r = 0.542; p < 0.005) between introversion and delayed episodic memory specific to BDNFMet individuals. The present study suggests that introversion and the BDNFMet variant synergistically interact to reduce episodic memory performance in healthy, young adults. These findings reaffirm that a more accurate explanation of cognitive variance can be achieved by looking at the synergistic effects of genotype and phenotype factors.

Impact of brain‐derived neurotrophic factor genetic polymorphism on cognition: A systematic review

“…Sixty‐three studies were identified under the memory domain. The included studies had healthy controls ( n = 36) (Alfimova et al., ; Avgan et al., ; Beste, Schneider, Epplen, & Arning, ; Bombardier, Beauchemin, Gosselin, Poirier, & De Beaumont, ; Cathomas, Vogler, Euler‐Sigmund, de Quervain, & Papassotiropoulos, ; Canivet et al., ; Chen et al., , ; Dennis et al., ; De Beaumont et al., ; Erickson et al., ; Freundlieb et al., ; Gajewski et al., ; Gong et al., ; Gonzalez‐Giraldo et al., ; Gosselin et al., ; Huang et al., ; Jasinska et al., ; Karnik et al., ; Kennedy et al., ; Lim et al., ; Liu et al., ; Lamb et al., ; Miyajima et al., ; Montag et al., ; Raz et al., ; Richter‐Schmidinger et al., ; Schofield et al., ; Stuart, Summers, Valenzuela, & Vickers, ; Thow et al., ; Voineskos et al., ; Ward et al., , ; Wilkosc et al., ; Wegman, Tyborowska, Hoogman, Arias Vásquez, & Janzen, ; Yogeetha et al., ), dementia ( n = 1) (Kim et al., ), Alzheimer’s ( n = 3) (Gomar, Conejero‐Goldberg, Huey, Davies, & Goldberg, ; Lim et al., ; Lin et al., ), Parkinson’s ( n = 1) (Bialecka et al., ), cardiovascular disease ( n = 2) (Swardfager et al., ; Szabo et al., ), obsessive‐compulsive disease ( n = 1) (Tukel et al., ), multiple sclerosis ( n = 1) (Fera et al., ), psychosis ( n = 2) (Aas et al., ; Martinho et al., ), depression/anxiety disorders ( n = 2) (Molendijk et al., ; Strauss, Barr, & George, ), brain injury ( n = 2) (McAllister et al., ; Narayanan et al., ), amnestic mild cognitive impairment ( n = 1) (Yu et al., ), schizophrenia and bipolar disorders ( n = 9) (Cao et al., ; Egan et al.,…”

BDNF Variants May Modulate Long-Term Visual Memory Performance in a Healthy Cohort

“…The rs6265 SNP is nominally associated in our study with a p -value of 0.006, however, rs7127239 showed no association ( p -value = 0.079). Several studies have investigated the association of BDNF SNPs with episodic memory which aligns with long-term visual memory; these studies focused on the Val66Met polymorphism, with the majority finding that the Met allele was associated with poorer episodic memory scores [11,37,38,39,40]. However, a number of studies have reported a link between the Met allele and better episodic memory scores [28,41,42], corresponding to our findings for long-term visual memory.…”

Episodic Memory Reliving and Personality

“…According to previous studies, Extraversion seems to facilitate and Neuroticism to inhibit episodic memory performance (Arbune et al, 2015; Bombardier et al, 2016; Klaming et al, 2017; Quoidbach et al, 2008; Siegler et al, 1991), but there is no clear evidence that vivid autobiographical memories are associated with any specific personality profile at the level of personality facets. Based on the scarce research literature, we expected that the quality of autobiographical memories (i.e., the AEMS-Episode and AEMS-General scores) is most strongly associated with the imagination- and emotion-related personality facets from the Openness to Experience and Extraversion domains, and we also predicted that the AEMS-Episode would be associated with the “affective” facets of Neuroticism and Extraversion.…”