scholarly journals Genetic Influences on Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia across Different Task Conditions

1990 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.I. Boomsma ◽  
G.C.M. van Baal ◽  
J.F. Orlebeke

AbstractRespiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) has been shown to be a sensitive index of vagal cardiac control. We studied the genetic and nongenetic influences on individual differences in RSA in a sample of 160 adolescent twins. RSA was measured during rest and across two different tasks. Results show that heritability is task dependent. The amount of genetic variance is the same, however, during rest and task conditions. Because nonshared environmental variance decreases during tasks, heritability is larger for RSA measured under more stressful conditions than for RSA as measured during rest. Multivariate models assessed the continuity of the genetic and environmental influences and show genetic influences to be the same across different conditions, while environmental influences are different. More specifically, a one-factor model is found for genetic influences and a second-order autoregressive model for the environmental factors.

Twin Research ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 277-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan A. Svensson ◽  
Bo Larsson ◽  
Elisabet Waldenlind ◽  
Nancy L. Pedersen

AbstractTo explore age-related mechanisms in the expression of recurrent headache, we evaluated whether genetic and environmental influences are a function of the reporting age using questionnaire information that was gathered in 1973 for 15- to 47-year-old Swedish twins (n =12,606 twin pairs). Liability to mixed headache (mild migraine and tension-type headache) was explained by non-additive genetic influences (49%) in men aged from 15 to 30 years and additive genetic plus shared environmental influences (28%) in men aged from 31 to 47 years. In women, the explained proportion of variance, which was mainly due to additive genetic effects, ranged from 61% in adolescent twins to 12% in twins aged from 41 to 47 years, whereas individual specific environmental variance was significantly lower in twins aged from 15 to 20 years than in twins aged from 21 to 30 years. Liability to migrainous headache (more severe migraine) was explained by non-addi-tive genetic influences in men, 32% in young men and 45% in old men, while total phenotypic variance was significantly lower in young men than in old men. In women, the explained proportion of variance ranged from 91% in the youngest age group to 37% in the oldest age group, with major contributions from non-additive effects in young and old women (15–20 years and 41–47 years, respectively) and additive genetic effects in intermediate age groups (21–40 years). While total variance showed a positive age trend, genetic variance tended to be stable across age groups, whereas individual specific environmental variance was significantly lower in adolescent women as compared to older women.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliot M. Tucker-Drob ◽  
Andrew Grotzinger ◽  
Daniel A. Briley ◽  
Laura E. Engelhardt ◽  
Frank D. Mann ◽  
...  

AbstractCortisol is the primary output of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and is central to the human biological stress response, with wide-ranging effects on physiological function and psychiatric health. In both humans and animals, cortisol is frequently studied as a biomarker for exposure to environmental stress. Relatively little attention has been paid to the possible role of genetic variation in heterogeneity in chronic cortisol, in spite of well-studied biological pathways of glucocorticoid function. Using recently developed technology, hair samples can now be used to measure accumulation of cortisol over several months. In contrast to more conventional salivary measures, hair cortisol is not influenced by diurnal variation or transient hormonal reactivity. In an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of 1 070 child and adolescent twins and multiples from 556 unique families, we estimated genetic and environmental influences on hair concentrations of cortisol and its inactive metabolite, cortisone. We identified sizable genetic influences on cortisol that decrease with age, concomitant with genetic influences on cortisone that increase with age. Shared environmental influences on cortisol and cortisone were modest and, for cortisol, decreased with age. Twin-specific, non-shared environmental contributions to cortisol and cortisone became increasingly correlated with age. We find some evidence for sex differences in the biometric contributions to cortisol, but no strong evidence for main or moderating effects of family socioeconomic status on cortisol or cortisone. This study constitutes the first genetic study of hormone concentrations in human hair, and provides the most definitive characterization to-date of age and socioeconomic influences on hair cortisol.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 1026-1026
Author(s):  
Alice Kim ◽  
Alyssa Kam ◽  
Maxwell Kofman ◽  
Christopher Beam

Abstract Heritability of cognitive ability changes across late adulthood, although whether genetic variance increases or decreases in importance is not understood well. We performed a systematic review of the heritability of cognitive ability derived from longitudinal twin studies of middle-aged and older adult twins. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, articles were identified in APA PsycINFO and Clarivate Web of Science electronic databases. Identified articles were screened by title and abstract; remaining full-text articles were then fully evaluated. Reference sections served as an additional method for identification of relevant articles. In total, 3,106 articles were identified and screened, 28 of which were included and were based on data from 10 longitudinal twin studies published from 1994-2021. There are large genetic influences on an initial level of cognitive performance across domains whereas there are small to moderate genetic influences on change in performance with age. Evidence was less definitive about whether the same or different genetic factors contribute to both level and change. Non-shared environmental influences appeared to drive individual changes in cognitive performance. Heritability tended to either be stable or decline after 65 years, possibly because of the increasing importance of non-shared environmental influences on cognitive ability. Recent studies report increases in heritability across specific subtests and domains. Shared environmental variance accounted for little variance in cognitive ability. Emerging research questions and future directions for understanding genetic and environment influences in the context of gene-environment interplay are highlighted in this review.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Stoakley ◽  
Karen J. Mathewson ◽  
Louis A. Schmidt ◽  
Kimberly A. Cote

Abstract. Resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is related to individual differences in waking affective style and self-regulation. However, little is known about the stability of RSA between sleep/wake stages or the relations between RSA during sleep and waking affective style. We examined resting RSA in 25 healthy undergraduates during the waking state and one night of sleep. Stability of cardiac variables across sleep/wake states was highly reliable within participants. As predicted, greater approach behavior and lower impulsivity were associated with higher RSA; these relations were evident in early night Non-REM (NREM) sleep, particularly in slow wave sleep (SWS). The current research extends previous findings by establishing stability of RSA within individuals between wake and sleep states, and by identifying SWS as an optimal period of measurement for relations between waking affective style and RSA.


2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 164-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Healy ◽  
Aaron Treadwell ◽  
Mandy Reagan

The current study was an attempt to determine the degree to which the suppression of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and attentional control were influential in the ability to engage various executive processes under high and low levels of negative affect. Ninety-four college students completed the Stroop Test while heart rate was being recorded. Estimates of the suppression of RSA were calculated from each participant in response to this test. The participants then completed self-ratings of attentional control, negative affect, and executive functioning. Regression analysis indicated that individual differences in estimates of the suppression of RSA, and ratings of attentional control were associated with the ability to employ executive processes but only when self-ratings of negative affect were low. An increase in negative affect compromised the ability to employ these strategies in the majority of participants. The data also suggest that high attentional control in conjunction with attenuated estimates of RSA suppression may increase the ability to use executive processes as negative affect increases.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lianne P. de Vries ◽  
Toos C. E. M. van Beijsterveldt ◽  
Hermine Maes ◽  
Lucía Colodro-Conde ◽  
Meike Bartels

AbstractThe distinction between genetic influences on the covariance (or bivariate heritability) and genetic correlations in bivariate twin models is often not well-understood or only one is reported while the results show distinctive information about the relation between traits. We applied bivariate twin models in a large sample of adolescent twins, to disentangle the association between well-being (WB) and four complex traits (optimism, anxious-depressed symptoms (AD), aggressive behaviour (AGG), and educational achievement (EA)). Optimism and AD showed respectively a strong positive and negative phenotypic correlation with WB, the negative correlation of WB and AGG is lower and the correlation with EA is nearly zero. All four traits showed a large genetic contribution to the covariance with well-being. The genetic correlations of well-being with optimism and AD are strong and smaller for AGG and EA. We used the results of the models to explain what information is retrieved based on the bivariate heritability versus the genetic correlations and the (clinical) implications.


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