Evidence for the modality independence of the genetic epistasis between the dopaminergic and cholinergic system on working memory capacity

Working memory (WM) is fractionated into systems for visuospatial and phonological information. Recently, it has been shown that the dopamine d2 receptor gene DRD2 and CHRNA4, the gene coding for the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor's alpha4 subunit, interact epistatically on visuospatial WM capacity. In the present study, we show a similar interaction on phonological WM capacity in N=137 healthy subjects genotyped for two single nucleotide polymorphisms (DRD2 rs6277 and CHRNA4 rs1044396). Given the functional independence of the two systems we hypothesize that the genetic interaction targets the central executive which is the common control process for both systems.

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