As
individual genetic analysis becomes faster and cheaper our disposition to
particular conditions is becoming easier to determine. Of course, the first
questions focus on our health, but the information possibilities are much wider
than that.
Dopamine
is an important chemical that works on our cognition, learning, reward, and
attention responses in our frontal cortex. There are a number of genes that
play a part in its production on spikes of brain activity and background level. Lim et al have attempted to tie down the effect of the polymorphism of these
genes on the ability of people to concentrate on a boring but demanding task
for a significant period of time (1).
The
experiment used 332 people who had to press a button to stop a digital counter
counting milliseconds as fast as they could whenever it appeared in view, which
it did every few seconds. They had to do this for twenty minutes and their
reaction times were monitored.
In
addition, their genes were untangled from saliva samples. Some of the genes are
thought make dopamine available on the call from activity and others control
the background level over time. Of course these two aren’t entirely independent
as a lot of demand will lead to a general increase over time.
The
results indicate that it is the genes that regulate the background level that
tend to give longer Time On Task (TOT) performance than those that control the
releases on spells of activity.
Perhaps
in future job interviews we will have to bring in our DNA stats as well as our
SAT scores to see if we are suited to mind numbing tasks on a production line.
