Emotion moderates the association between HTR2A (rs6313) genotype and antisaccade latency

Abstract

The serotonin system is heavily involved in cognitive and emotional control processes. Previous work has typically investigated this system's role in control processes separately for cognitive and emotional domains, yet it has become clear the two are linked. The present study, therefore, examined whether variation in a serotonin receptor gene (HTR2A, rs6313) moderated effects of emotion on inhibitory control. An emotional antisaccade task was used in which participants looked toward (prosaccade) or away (antisaccade) from a target presented to the left or right of a happy, angry, or neutral face. Overall, antisaccade latencies were slower for rs6313 C allele homozygotes than T allele carriers, with no effect of genotype on prosaccade latencies. Thus, C allele homozygotes showed relatively weak inhibitory control but intact reflexive control. Importantly, the emotional stimulus was either present during target presentation (overlap trials) or absent (gap trials). The gap effect (slowed latency in overlap versus gap trials) in antisaccade trials was larger with angry versus neutral faces in C allele homozygotes. This impairing effect of negative valence on inhibitory control was larger in C allele homozygotes than T allele carriers, suggesting that angry faces disrupted/competed with the control processes needed to generate an antisaccade to a greater degree in these individuals. The genotype difference in the negative valence effect on antisaccade latency was attenuated when trial N-1 was an antisaccade, indicating top-down regulation of emotional influence. This effect was reduced in C/C versus T/_ individuals, suggesting a weaker capacity to downregulate emotional processing of task-irrelevant stimuli.

Parenting behaviors, inhibitory control, and aggression: Moderation by serotonin receptor 2A haplotypes.

“…Compared to adolescents without the TT haplotype, those carrying one copy of the TT haplotype were characterized by greater inhibitory control. This is consistent with previous studies (e.g., Mills et al, 2016) because the T allele is associated with higher receptor expression (Polesskaya et al, 2006), which confers a higher receptor binding level and in turn results in a better capacity for inhibitory control via regulation of the PFC activity (Fisher et al, 2009). However, this genetic effect was not obtained on aggression, which suggested that inhibitory control is closer to the upstream genetic substrate than aggressive behavior.…”

Association between categorization of emotionally-charged and neutral visual scenes and parameters of event-related potentials in carriers of different COMT, HTR2A, BDNF gene genotypes

“…The serotonin system is actively involved in the processes of cognitive and emotional control. It was also shown that the HTR2A serotonin receptor gene is involved in the emotional assessment of visual stimuli ( Mills et al , 2016 ).…”