• Nir Shalev, Signe Vangkilde, Matt J Neville, Elizabeth M Tunbridge, Anna C Nobre, and Magdalena Chechlacz.
• Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
• Neuroscience. 2019 Aug 1; 412: 175-189.

AbstractVisual attention enables us to prioritise behaviourally relevant visual information while ignoring distraction. The neural networks supporting attention are modulated by two catecholamines, dopamine and noradrenaline. The current study investigated the effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms in two catecholaminergic genes - COMT (Val158Met) and DBH (444 G/A) - on individual differences in attention functions. Participants (n = 125) were recruited from the Oxford Biobank by genotype-based recall. They were tested on a continuous performance task (sustained attention), a Go/No-Go task (response inhibition), and a task assessing attentional selection in accordance with the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA). We found a significant effect of DBH genotype status on the capacity to maintain attention over time (sustained attention) as measured by the continuous performance task. Furthermore, we demonstrated a significant association between COMT genotype status and effective threshold of visual perception in attentional selection as estimated based on the TVA task performance. No other group differences in attention function were found with respect to the studied genotypes. Overall, our findings provide novel experimental evidence that: (i) dopaminergic and noradrenergic genotypes have dissociable effects on visual attention; (ii) either insufficient or excessive catecholaminergic activity may have equally detrimental effects on sustained attention.Copyright © 2019 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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