The val/met polymorphism of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene predicts decline in perceptual speed in older adults

Psychology and Aging

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 2014, Pages 384-392

  Ghisletta, Paolo ^a,b   Bäckman, Lars ^c   Bertram, Lars ^d   Brandmaier, Andreas Markus ^e   Gerstorf, Denis ^f,g   Liu, Tian ^d,e   Lindenberger, Ulman ^e  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA   (Switzerland)

^b Distance Learning University   (Switzerland)

^c AGING RESEARCH CENTER   (Sweden)

^d MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR MOLECULAR GENETICS   (Germany)

^e MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT   (Germany)

^f HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

^g PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

BDNF val met polymorphism; Berlin aging study; Cognitive decline

Indexed keywords

BRAIN DERIVED NEUROTROPHIC FACTOR; METHIONINE; VALINE;

AGED; AGING; ARTICLE; COGNITION; DEMENTIA; DNA POLYMORPHISM; FEMALE; GENETIC ASSOCIATION; GENOTYPE; HETEROZYGOTE; HIGH RISK POPULATION; HOMOZYGOTE; HUMAN; LONGITUDINAL STUDY; MALE; MENTAL DETERIORATION; MENTAL TASK; NORMAL HUMAN; PERCEPTION; SENESCENCE; GENETIC POLYMORPHISM; GENETICS; GERMANY; MISSENSE MUTATION; PHYSIOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGY; REACTION TIME; SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT; SOCIAL CLASS; VERY ELDERLY;

AGED; AGED, 80 AND OVER; AGING; BERLIN; BRAIN-DERIVED NEUROTROPHIC FACTOR; COGNITION; FEMALE; HOMOZYGOTE; HUMANS; LONGITUDINAL STUDIES; MALE; METHIONINE; MUTATION, MISSENSE; POLYMORPHISM, GENETIC; REACTION TIME; SEX CHARACTERISTICS; SOCIAL CLASS; VALINE;

EID: 84903169279     PISSN: 08827974     EISSN: 19391498     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/a0035201     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. Arbuckle, J. L. (1996). Full information estimation in the presence of incomplete data. In G. A. Marcoulides&R. E. Schumacker (Eds.), Advanced structural equation modeling: Issues and techniques (pp. 243-277). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
2. Baltes, P. B.,&Mayer, K. U. (1999). The Berlin Aging Study: Aging from 70 to 100. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
3. Bryk, A. S.,&Raudenbush, S. W. (1987). Application of hierarchical linear models to assessing change. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 147-158.
4. Bueller, J. A., Aftab, M., Sen, S., Gomez-Hassan, D., Burmeister, M., & Zubieta, J.-K. (2006). BDNF Val66Met allele is associated with reduced hippocampal volume in healthy subjects. Biological Psychiatry, 59, 812-815.
5. Colzato, L. S., van den Wildenberg, W. P. M.,&Hommel, B. (2013). The genetic impact (C957T-DRD2) on inhibitory control is magnified by aging. Neuropsychologia, 51, 1377-1381.
6. Davies, G., Tenesa, A., Payton, A., Yang, J., Harris, S. E., Liewald, D., . . . Deary, I. J. (2011). Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic. Molecular Psychiatry, 16, 996-1005.
7. Deary, I. J., Yang, J., Davies, G., Harris, S. E., Tenesa, A., Liewald, D., . . . Visscher, P. M. (2012). Genetic contributions to stability and change in intelligence from childhood to old age. Nature, 482, 212-215.
8. Dempster, E., Toulopoulou, T., McDonald, C., Bramon, E., Walshe, M., Filbey, F., . . . Collier, D. A. (2005). Association between BDNF Val66Met genotype and episodic memory. American Journal of Medical Genetics. Part B, Neuropsychiatric Genetics, 134, 73-75.
9. Echeverria, D., Woods, J. S., Heyer, N. J., Rohlman, D. S., Farin, F. M., Bittner, A. C., Jr., . . . Garabedian, C. (2005). Chronic low-level mercury exposure, BDNF polymorphism, and associations with cognitive and motor function. Neurotoxicology and Teratology, 27, 781-796.
10. Egan, M. F., Kojima, M., Callicott, J. H., Goldberg, T. E., Kolachana, B. S., Bertolino, A., . . . Weinberger, D. R. (2003). The BDNF Val66Met polymorphism affects activity-dependent secretion of BDNF and human memory and hippocampal function. Cell, 112, 257-269.
11. Enders, C. K. (2001). A primer on maximum likelihood algorithms available for use with missing data. Structural Equation Modeling, 8, 128-141.
12. Erickson, K. I., Kim, J. S., Suever, B. L., Voss, M. W., Francis, B. M., & Kramer, A. F. (2008). Genetic contributions to age-related decline in executive function: A 10-year longitudinal study of COMT and BDNF polymorphisms. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2, 11.
13. Fan, X. (2003). Power of latent growth modeling for detecting group differences in linear growth trajectory parameters. Structural Equation Modeling, 10, 380-400.
14. Ferrer, E., Salthouse, T. A., McArdle, J. J., Stewart, W. F.,&Schwartz, B. S. (2005). Multivariate modeling of age and retest in longitudinal studies of cognitive abilities. Psychology and Aging, 20, 412-422.
15. Finkbeiner, C. (1979). Estimation for the multiple factor model when data are missing. Psychometrika, 44, 409-420.
16. Finkel, D., Reynolds, C. A., McArdle, J. J., Hamagami, F.,&Pedersen, N. L. (2009). Genetic variance in processing speed drives variation in aging of spatial and memory abilities. Developmental Psychology, 45, 820-834.
17. Freund, J., Brandmaier, A. M., Lewejohann, L., Kirste, I., Kritzler, M., Krüger, A., . . . Kempermann, G. (2013). Emergence of individuality in genetically identical mice. Science, 340, 756-759.
18. Frodl, T., Schüle, C., Schmitt, G., Born, C., Baghai, T., Zill, P., . . . Meisenzahl, E. M. (2007). Association of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor Val66Met polymorphism with reduced hippocampal volumes in major depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 64, 410-416.
19. Gerstorf, D., Herlitz, A.,&Smith, J. (2006). Stability of cognitive sex differences in advanced old age: The role of education and attrition. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 61, P245-P249.
20. Ghisletta, P., McArdle, J. J.,&Lindenberger, U. (2006). Longitudinal cognition-survival relations in old and very old age. European Psychologist, 11, 204-223.
21. Ghisletta, P., Rabbitt, P., Lunn, M.,&Lindenberger, U. (2012). Two thirds of the age-based changes in fluid and crystallized intelligence, perceptual speed, and memory in adulthood are shared. Intelligence, 40, 260-268.
22. Graham, J. W. (2009). Missing data analysis: Making it work in the real world. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 549-576.
23. Hariri, A. R., Goldberg, T. E., Mattay, V. S., Kolachana, B. S., Callicott, J. H., Egan, M. F.,&Weinberger, D. R. (2003). Brain-derived neurotrophic factor Val66Met polymorphism affects human memory-related hippocampal activity and predicts memory performance. The Journal of Neuroscience: The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 23, 6690-6694.
24. Harris, S. E.,&Deary, I. J. (2011). The genetics of cognitive ability and cognitive ageing in healthy older people. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 388-394.
25. Helmchen, H., Baltes, M. M., Geiselmann, B., Kanowski, S., Linden, M., & Reischies, F. M. (1999). Psychiatric illnesses in old age. In P. B. Baltes&K. U. Mayer (Eds.), The Berlin Aging Study: Aging from 700 to 100 (pp. 167-196). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
26. Heston, L. L. (1966). Psychiatric disorders in foster home reared children of schizophrenic mothers. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 112, 819-825.
27. Holland, P. M., Abramson, R. D., Watson, R.,&Gelfand, D. H. (1991). Detection of specific polymerase chain reaction product by utilizing the 5'-3' exonuclease activity of Thermus aquaticus DNA polymerase. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 88, 7276-7280.
28. Hultsch, D. F. (2004). Introduction to special issue on longitudinal studies of cognitive aging. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 11, 101-103.
29. Hunt, E. B. (2011). Human intelligence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
30. Laird, N. M.,&Ware, J. H. (1982). Random-effects models for longitudinal data. Biometrics, 38, 963-974.
31. Li, S.-C., Chicherio, C., Nyberg, L., von Oertzen, T., Nagel, I. E., Papenberg, G., . . . Bäckman, L. (2010). Ebbinghaus revisited: Influences of the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism on backward serial recall are modulated by human aging. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 2164-2173.
32. Li, S.-C., Papenberg, G., Nagel, I. E., Preuschhof, C., Schröder, J., Nietfeld, W., . . . Bäckman, L. (2013). Aging magnifies the effects of dopamine transporter and D2 receptor genes on backward serial memory. Neurobiology of Aging, 34, 358, e1-10.
33. Lim, Y. Y., Villemagne, V. L., Laws, S. M., Ames, D., Pietrzak, R. H., Ellis, K. A., . . . Maruff, P. (2013). BDNF Val66Met, Aß amyloid, and cognitive decline in preclinical Alzheimer's disease. Neurobiology of Aging, 34, 2457-2464.
34. Lindenberger, U.,&Ghisletta, P. (2009). Cognitive and sensory declines in old age: Gauging the evidence for a common cause. Psychology and Aging, 24, 1-16.
35. Lindenberger, U., Mayr, U.,&Kliegl, R. (1993). Speed and intelligence in old age. Psychology and Aging, 8, 207-220.
36. Lindenberger, U., Nagel, I. E., Chicherio, C., Li, S.-C., Heekeren, H. R., & Bäckman, L. (2008). Age-related functioning in brain resources modulates genetic effects on cognitive functioning. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2, 234-244.
37. Lindenberger, U., Singer, T.,&Baltes, P. B. (2002). Longitudinal selectivity in aging populations: Separating mortality-associated versus experimental components in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE). The Journals of Gerontology: Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 57, P474-P482.
38. Lindenberger, U., Smith, J., Mayer, K. U.,&Baltes, P. B. (2010). Die Berliner Alterstudie [The Berlin Aging Study]. Berlin, Germany: Akademie Verlag.
39. Lövdén, M., Ghisletta, P.,&Lindenberger, U. (2004). Cognition in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE): The first 10 years. Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 11, 104-133.
40. Lövdén, M., Schaefer, S., Noack, H., Kanowski, M., Kaufmann, J., Tempelmann, C., . . . Bäckman, L. (2011). Performance-related increases in hippocampal N-acetylaspartate (NAA) induced by spatial navigation training are restricted to BDNF Val homozygotes. Cerebral Cortex, 21, 1435-1442.
41. Maher, B. (2008). Personal genomes: The case of the missing heritability. Nature, 456, 18-21.
42. McArdle, J. J., Prescott, C. A., Hamagami, F.,&Horn, J. L. (1998). A contemporary method for developmental-genetic analyses of age changes in intellectual abilities. Developmental Neuropsychology, 14, 69-114.
43. Miyajima, F., Ollier, W., Mayes, A., Jackson, A., Thacker, N., Rabbitt, P., . . . Payton, A. (2008). Brain-derived neurotrophic factor polymorphism Val66Met influences cognitive abilities in the elderly. Genes, Brain, and Behavior, 7, 411-417.
44. Neiderhiser, J. M. (2001). Understanding the roles of genome and envirome: Methods in genetic epidemiology. The British Journal of Psychiatry. Supplement, 178, s12-s17.
45. Papenberg, G., Bäckman, L., Nagel, I. E., Nietfeld, W., Schröder, J., Bertram, L., . . . Li, S.-C. (2013). Dopaminergic gene polymorphisms affect long-term forgetting in old age: Further support for the magnification hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25, 571-579.
46. Payton, A. (2009). The impact of genetic research on our understanding of normal cognitive ageing: 1995 to 2009. Neuropsychology Review, 19, 451-477.
47. Petrill, S. A. (2002). The case for general intelligence: A behavioral genetic perspective. In R. J. Sternberg&E. L. Grigorenko (Eds.), The general factor of intelligence (pp. 281-298). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
48. Pezawas, L., Verchinski, B. A., Mattay, V. S., Callicott, J. H., Kolachana, B. S., Straub, R. E., . . . Weinberger, D. R. (2004). The brain-derived neurotrophic factor Val66Met polymorphism and variation in human cortical morphology. The Journal of Neuroscience: The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 24, 10099-10102.
49. Plomin, R., DeFries, J. C., Knopik, V. S.,&Neiderhiser, J. M. (2013). Behavioral genetics (6th ed.). New York, NY: Worth.
50. Plomin, R., Haworth, C. M. A., Meaburn, E. L., Price, T. S., Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 2,&Davis, O. S. P. (2013). Common DNA markers can account for more than half of the genetic influence on cognitive abilities. Psychological Science, 24, 562-568.
51. Raz, N., Rodrigue, K. M., Kennedy, K. M.,&Land, S. (2009). Genetic and vascular modifiers of age-sensitive cognitive skills: Effects of COMT, BDNF, ApoE, and hypertension. Neuropsychology, 23, 105-116.
52. Rybakowski, J. K., Borkowska, A., Czerski, P. M., Skibińska, M., & Hauser, J. (2003). Polymorphism of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene and performance on a cognitive prefrontal test in bipolar patients. Bipolar Disorders, 5, 468-472.
53. Rybakowski, J. K., Borkowska, A., Skibińska, M., Szczepankiewicz, A., Kapelski, P., Leszczynska-Rodziewicz, A., . . . Hauser, J. (2006). Prefrontal cognition in schizophrenia and bipolar illness in relation to Val66Met polymorphism of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 60, 70-76.
54. Salthouse, T. A. (1996). The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. Psychological Review, 103, 403-428.
55. Sambataro, F., Murty, V. P., Lemaitre, H. S., Reed, J. D., Das, S., Goldberg, T. E., . . . Mattay, V. S. (2010). BNDF modulates normal human hippocampal ageing. Molecular Psychiatry, 15, 116-118.
56. Schaie, K. W.,&Hofer, S. M. (2001). Longitudinal studies in aging research. In J. E. Birren&K. W. Schaie (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of aging (5th ed., pp. 53-77). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
57. Snijders, T. A. B.,&Bosker, R. J. (1999). Multilevel analysis: An introduction to basic and advanced multilevel modeling. London, UK: Sage.
58. Tan, Y. L., Zhou, D. F., Cao, L. Y., Zou, Y. Z., Wu, G. Y.,&Zhang, X. Y. (2005). Effect of the BDNF Val66Met genotype on episodic memory in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 77, 355-356.
59. Tsai, S.-J., Hong, C.-J., Yu, Y. W.-Y.,&Chen, T.-J. (2004). Association study of a brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) Val66Met polymorphism and personality trait and intelligence in healthy young females. Neuropsychobiology, 49, 13-16.
60. Turkheimer, E. (2011). Still missing. Research in Human Development, 8, 227-241.
61. Turkheimer, E., Haley, A., Waldron, M., D'Onofrio, B.,&Gottesman, I. I. (2003). Socioeconomic status modifies heritability of IQ in young children. Psychological Science, 14, 623-628.
62. Visscher, P. M., Yang, J.,&Goddard, M. E. (2010). A commentary on "Common SNPs explain a large proportion of the heritability for human height" by Yang et al. (2010). Twin Research and Human Genetics, 13, 517-524.
63. Wechsler, D. (1955). Manual for the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. New York, NY: The Psychological Corporation.
64. Yang, J., Benyamin, B., McEvoy, B. P., Gordon, S., Henders, A. K., Nyholt, D. R., . . . Visscher, P. M. (2010). Common SNPs explain a large proportion of the heritability for human height. Nature Genetics, 42, 565-569.
65. Yang, J., Lee, S. H., Goddard, M. E.,&Visscher, P. M. (2011). GCTA: A tool for genome-wide complex trait analysis. American Journal of Human Genetics, 88, 76-82.