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Predicting sensation seeking from dopamine genes: A candidate system approach
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Predicting sensation seeking from dopamine genes: A candidate system approach

Jaime Derringer, Robert F Krueger, Danielle M Dick, Scott Saccone, Richard A Grucza, Arpana Agrawal, Peng Lin, Laura Almasy, Howard J Edenberg, Tatiana Foroud, …
Psychological science, Vol.21(9), pp.1282-1290
09/2010
DOI: 10.1177/0956797610380699
PMCID: PMC3031097
PMID: 20732903
url
https://soar.suny.edu/bitstream/20.500.12648/8205/1/nihms264820.pdfView
Open Access

Abstract

Sensation seeking is a heritable personality trait that has been reliably linked to behavior disorders. The dopamine system has been hypothesized to contribute to individual differences in sensation seeking, and both experimental and observational studies in humans and non-human animals provide evidence for this relationship. We present here a candidate-system approach to genetic association analysis of sensation seeking, in which single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from a number of dopaminergic genes were analyzed. Using 273 SNPs from eight dopamine genes in a sample of 635 unrelated individuals, we examined the aggregate effects of those SNPs significantly associated with sensation seeking. Multiple SNPs in four dopamine genes accounted for significant variance in sensation seeking. These results suggest that aggregation of multiple SNPs within genes relevant to a specific neurobiological system into a “genetic risk score” may explain a nontrivial proportion of variance in human traits.
Dopamine candidate gene sensation seeking association study

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