Habit Learning and the Genetics of the Dopamine D3 Receptor Evidence From Patients With Schizophrenia and Healthy Controls

• Published in: Behavioral neuroscience Vol. 119; no. 3; pp. 687 - 693
• Main Authors: Kéri, Szabolcs, Juhász, Anna, Rimanóczy, Ágnes, Szekeres, György, Kelemen, Oguz, Cimmer, Csongor, Szendi, István, Benedek, György, Janka, Zoltán
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-06-2005
• Subjects: Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Analysis of Variance; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Cues; DNA Mutational Analysis - methods; Dopamine; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Genetics; Genotype & phenotype; Glycine - genetics; Habits; Human; Humans; Learning; Learning - physiology; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Neural Receptors; Neuropsychological Tests - statistics & numerical data; Neurotransmission and behavior; Polymorphism; Polymorphism, Genetic; Predictive Value of Tests; Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Psychoses; Receptors, Dopamine D2 - genetics; Receptors, Dopamine D3; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction - methods; RNA, Messenger - biosynthesis; Schizophrenia; Schizophrenia - genetics; Schizophrenic Psychology; Serine - genetics; Task Performance and Analysis; procedural learning; basal ganglia; schizophrenia; probabilistic classification learning; dopamine; Psychosis; Learning; Human; Acquisition process; Healthy subject; Schizophrenia; Genetics; Comparative study; D3 Dopamine receptor
• ISSN: 0735-7044; 1939-0084
• DOI: 10.1037/0735-7044.119.3.687

In this study, the authors investigated the relationship between the Ser9Gly (SG) polymorphism of the dopamine D
3
receptor (DRD3) and striatal habit learning in healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia. Participants were given the weather prediction task, during which probabilistic cue-response associations were learned for tarot cards and weather outcomes (rain or sunshine). In both healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia, participants with Ser9Ser (SS) genotype did not learn during the early phase of the task (1-50 trials), whereas participants with SG genotype did so. During the late phase of the task (51-100 trials), both participants with SS and SG genotype exhibited significant learning. Learning rate was normal in patients with schizophrenia. These results suggest that the DRD3 variant containing glycine is associated with more efficient striatal habit learning in healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia.