A Genetic Locus Mediating Attentional Processing.

Attention is required for most higher-order cognitive functions, but despite extensive and careful study, central unifying principles have been challenging to elicit. To provide a new perspective, we took a forward genetics approach to identify genes with large contributions to attentional performance. We studied 200 genetically diverse mice on measures of pre-attentive processing and through genetic mapping identified a small locus on chromosome 13 (95%CI: 92.22- 94.09 Mb), driving substantial variation (19%) in this trait. Further characterization of the locus revealed a causative gene, Homer1a, a synaptic protein, whose down-regulation specifically in prefrontal excitatory cells during a developmental critical period (更多