CNTNAP2 and Language Processing in Healthy Individuals as Measured with ERPs

Miriam Kos,Peter Hagoort,Mark Rijpkema,Guillen Fernandez,Tineke M Snijders,Danielle Van Den Brink,Barbara Franke

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046995

Abstract

The genetic FOXP2-CNTNAP2 pathway has been shown to be involved in the language capacity. We investigated whether a common variant of CNTNAP2 (rs7794745) is relevant for syntactic and semantic processing in the general population by using a visual sentence processing paradigm while recording ERPs in 49 healthy adults. While both AA homozygotes and T-carriers showed a standard N400 effect to semantic anomalies, the response to subject-verb agreement violations differed across genotype groups. T-carriers displayed an anterior negativity preceding the P600 effect, whereas for the AA group only a P600 effect was observed. These results provide another piece of evidence that the neuronal architecture of the human faculty of language is shaped differently by effects that are genetically determined.

Highlights

Even though relatively little is known about the molecular genetic basis of language, several genes have been shown to play a role in language, such as the FOXP2CNTNAP2 pathway [2,3]
We examine the relationship between this CNTNAP2 rs7794745 variant to event-related brain potentials (ERPs) responses sensitive to syntactic agreement and semantic processing, enabling us to see whether CNTNAP2 rs7794745 is involved in linguistic domains outside of syntax
In this paper we show that a common variant of CNTNAP2 is relevant for sentence processing as measured with ERPs

Summary

Introduction

There is compelling evidence that part of this variation has a genetic basis. And twin studies have revealed a large heritable component in language-related disorders. Heritable factors are found to be responsible for part of the variance in healthy people’s linguistic abilities [1,2]. Even though relatively little is known about the molecular genetic basis of language, several genes have been shown to play a role in language, such as the FOXP2CNTNAP2 pathway [2,3]. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether a common variant of CNTNAP2 (rs7794745) is relevant for syntactic and semantic processing in the general population

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Results

Conclusion