Associations between variants near a monoaminergic pathways gene (PHOX2B) and amygdala reactivity: A genome-wide functional imaging study

As the amygdala is part of the phylogenetic old brain, and its anatomical and functional properties are conserved across species, it is reasonable to assume genetic influence on its activity. A large corpus of candidate gene studies indicate that individual differences in amygdala activity may be caused by genetic variants within monoaminergic signaling pathways such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. However, to our knowledge, the use of genome-wide data to discover genetic variants underlying individual differences in adult amygdala activity is novel. In the present study, the combination of genome-wide data and functional imaging phenotypes from an emotional faces task yielded a significant association between rs10014254 and the amygdala using a region of interest approach. This single nucleotide polymorphism is located in a regulatory region upstream of the Paired-like homeobox 2b (PHOX2B) gene; therefore it could affect the expression of this gene. PHOX2B regulates the expression of enzymes necessary for the synthesis of several monoamines and is essential for the development of the autonomic nervous system. However, an attempt to replicate the finding in an independent sample from North America did not succeed. The synthesis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and genome-wide data takes a hypothesis-free approach as to which genetic variants are of interest. Therefore, we believe that an undirected finding within such a plausible region is of interest, and that our results add further support to the hypothesis that monoaminergic signaling pathways play a central role in regulating amygdala activity.