P300 event‐related potential heritability in monozygotic and dizygotic twins

Abstract

The present study examined the heritability of the P3 waveform and the N1, P2, and N2 components by assessing the visual event-related potential (ERP) of 30 monozygotic (MZ) and 34 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. Electroencephalogram activity was recorded from Pz, P3, and P4 scalp sites while individuals performed a reaction time task involving two conditions differing in difficulty. Genetic modeling indicated substantial genetic influence on P3 amplitude, P3 latency, and manual reaction time for the difficult condition. No significant heritability was found for the latency of P3 or manual reaction time for the easy condition, but P3 amplitude was heritable for this condition. The amplitude of the early components (N1, P2, and N2) was heritable, but no significant genetic influences were found for the latency of these components. Compared with the DZ twins, the greater similarity of the MZ pairs on the event-related potential measures was not due to their greater similarity in either head dimensions or mental ability, despite the facts that IQ scores were weakly correlated with P3 and N2 amplitude and that amplitude and latency were related to some measures of head size. These findings suggest that P3 amplitude and the amplitude of earlier ERP components are under partial genetic control, supporting the notion that these ERP components could perhaps be used to identify genetic risk for psychopathology.

Longitudinal study of genetic influences on ERP‐P3 during childhood

“…This contrasts with the results of two other large twin studies on P3 that did not find evidence for heritability of P3 latency in adults or adolescents (O'Connor et al, 1994;van Beijsterveldt, 1996). A reason for this discrepancy is provided by the study of Katsanis et al (1997). In that study, P3 latency was found to be influenced by genetic factors in the difficult visual oddball task, but not in the easy visual oddball task.…”

“…No genetic influences on P3 latencies were observed. Recently, Katsanis, Iacono, McGue, and Carlson (1997) reported on a P3 study in 64 adolescent MZ and DZ twin pairs. The study included an easy and a difficult visual oddball task.…”

Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b

“…EEG spectral characteristics are highly similar for identical twins (Lykken, 1974;Stassen et al, 1987), and strong spectral power similarities are observed for biological family members (Eischen et al, 1995;Vogel et al, 1979). P300 is virtually identical for pairs of monozygotic twins, less so for dyzygotic twins, and different for unrelated controls (Katsanis et al, 1997;O'Connor et al, 1994;Polich and Burns, 1987). P300 heritability also is evidenced by biologically related family members who demonstrate significant inter-family member correlations for ERP measures Polich and Bloom, 1999).…”

Event-related potentials in clinical research: Guidelines for eliciting, recording, and quantifying mismatch negativity, P300, and N400

“…It is therefore not surprising that P300 characteristics have been found to be strikingly similar between pairs of monozygotic as compared to dyzygotic twins or unrelated controls (Polich and Burns, 1987;O'Connor et al, 1994;Katsanis et al, 1997). Meta-analyses of twin studies (van Beijsterveldt and van Baal, Page 9 2002) estimated P300 amplitude heritability to be 60%, with a more recent twin study (Hall et al, 2006) yielding a somewhat higher estimate of 69%.…”