[Comparison of visual evoked related potentials in healthy young adults of different COMT genotypes by using a 3-back...

To explore the change of numerical working memory ability in healthy young adults, continuous mental arithmetic task were performed for 3 hours and a numerical working memory paradigm was determined at 5 min intervals according to different COMT genotypes of young adults. Twenty subjects of different genotypes were chosen from 115 healthy young adults, P3 event-related potentials was utilized to observe the relationship between this COMT polymorphism and cortical physiology in a continuous working memory task. The results demonstrate that subjects bearing the Val/Val homozygote have significantly higher mean P3 amplitudes than Val/Met heterozygote (P<0.01), however, insignificant differences in comparison to Met/Met homozygote. Mean P3 amplitudes tended to sharply increase among different genotype subjects are observe in different Blocks. We suggest that numerical working memory ability was associated with P3 amplitude evoked from centro-parietal area of brain, which indicate the degree of influence of task on different subjects.