Highs and lows: Genetic susceptibility to daily events

Abstract

Why people differ in their susceptibility to external events is essential to our understanding of personality, human development, and mental disorders. Genes explain a substantial portion of these differences. Specifically, genes influencing the serotonin system are hypothesized to be differential susceptibility factors, determining a person's reactivity to both positive and negative environments. We tested whether genetic variation in the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) is a differential susceptibility factor for daily events. Participants (N = 326, 77% female, mean age = 25, range = 17-36) completed smartphone questionnaires four times a day over four to five days, measuring stressors, uplifts, positive and negative affect. Affect was predicted from environment valence in the previous hour on a withinperson level using three-level autoregressive linear mixed models. The 5-HTTLPR fulfilled all criteria of a differential susceptibility factor: Positive affect in carriers of the short allele (S) was less reactive to both uplifts and stressors, compared to homozygous carriers of the long allele (L/L). This pattern might reflect relative affective inflexibility in S-allele carriers. Our study provides insight into the serotonin system's general role in susceptibility and highlights the need to assess the whole spectrum of naturalistic experiences.

Linking gene expression patterns and brain morphometry to trauma and symptom severity in patients with functional seizures

“…Interestingly, two previous genotyping studies in motor-FND found i) that serotonin receptor gene polymorphism was related to symptom severity, childhood abuse burden, and functional amygdala -middle frontal gyrus connectivity, and ii) an increased methylation of the oxytocin receptor gene [42,43]. Overall, genetic variations in serotonin and oxytocin receptor systems have been related to amygdala reactivity, acute stress responses, and affective vulnerabilities to everyday events [4,6,[85][86][87][88][89]. Type and severity of stressors has been shown to differentially influence regionspecific serotonin receptor gene expression (e.g., chronic psychosocial stress reduced expression in cingulo-insular and hippocampal regions [90]), further corroborating the importance of ALE subtyping [91].…”

Affective neural signatures do not distinguish women with emotion dysregulation from healthy controls: A mega-analysis across three task-based fMRI studies

“…Previously, we observed that naturalistic everyday life stressors are associated not only with higher negative affect, but also lower positive affect (Sicorello, Dieckmann, et al, 2020). Therefore, we included additional analyses on neural signatures for positive emotions as well.…”

Stress research during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

“…They further monitored circumstances associated with observed variations. Sicorello et al (2020) were able to show that the participants’ susceptibility to external events was shaped by variation in the serotonin transporter gene. Vice versa, EMA allows stress researchers to systematically track fluctuations in individual stress levels along a specific stressful event (event-based monitoring) ( Shiffman et al, 2008 ).…”

“…With regard to stress research, EMA is capable of registering random fluctuations in individual stress levels at (random or fixed) time intervals ( Kudielka et al, 2012 ; Schlotz, 2011 ; Shiffman et al, 2008 ). Sicorello et al (2020) , for example, asked their participants over several days to complete stress-related questionnaires on their smartphones. They further monitored circumstances associated with observed variations.…”