LD Blog

Fan, Yanhong, Fossella, and Posner (2001) compared monozygotic and dyzygotic twins on the Attention Network Test (ANT), an assessment system that measures three anatomically defined networks related to attention. They found that one of these three appeared likely to be inheritable.

Results: The efficiency of the executive attention network, that mediates stimulus and response conflict, shows sufficient heritability to warrant further study. Alerting and overall reaction time show some evidence for heritability and in our study the orienting network shows no evidence of heritability.

Conclusions: These results suggest that genetic variation contributes to normal individual differences in higher order executive attention involving dopamine rich frontal areas including the anterior cingulate. At least the executive portion of the ANT may serve as a valid endophenotype for larger twin studies and subsequent molecular genetic analysis in normal subject populations.

Link to a the PDF of the Fan et al. paper, “Assessing the heritability of attentional networks.” There’s just boat loads of interesting activity in this area. Check this list of sources.