Polygenic contributions to performance on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task.

Risky decision-making is a common, heritable endophenotype seen across many psychiatric disorders. Its underlying genetic architecture is incompletely explored. We examined behavior in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), which tests risky decision-making, in two independent samples of European ancestry. One sample (n = 1138) comprised healthy participants and some psychiatric patients (53 schizophrenia, 42 bipolar disorder, 47 ADHD); the other (n = 911) excluded for recent treatment of various psychiatric disorders but not ADHD. Participants provided DNA and performed the BART, indexed by mean adjusted pumps. We constructed a polygenic risk score (PRS) for discovery in each dataset and tested it in the other as replication. Subsequently, a genome-wide MEGA-analysis, combining both samples, tested genetic correlation with risk-taking self-report in the UK Biobank sample and psychiatric phenotypes characterized by risk-taking (ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Alcohol Use Disorder, prior cannabis use) in the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. The PRS for BART performance in one dataset predicted task performance in the replication sample (r = 0.13, p = 0.000012, pFDR = 0.000052), as did the reciprocal analysis (r = 0.09, p = 0.0083, pFDR=0.04). Excluding participants with psychiatric diagnoses produced similar results. The MEGA-GWAS identified a single SNP (rs12023073; p = 3.24 × 10-8) near IGSF21, a protein involved in inhibitory brain synapses; replication samples are needed to validate this result. A PRS for self-reported cannabis use (p = 0.00047, pFDR = 0.0053), but not self-reported risk-taking or psychiatric disorder status, predicted behavior on the BART in our MEGA-GWAS sample. The findings reveal polygenic architecture of risky decision-making as measured by the BART and highlight its overlap with cannabis use.

Irish views on death and dying: a national survey.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the public's understanding of and views about a range of ethical issues in relation to death and dying. DESIGN: Random, digit-dialing, telephone interview SETTING: Ireland. PARTICIPANTS: 667 adult individuals. RESULTS: The general public are unfamiliar with terms associated with end-of-life care. Although most want to be informed if they have a terminal illness, they also value family support in this regard. Most of the respondents believe that competent patients have the right to refuse life-saving treatment. Most also (mistakenly) believe that families, either alone or with physicians, have the authority to make decisions about starting or stopping treatment for incompetent patients. Most Irish people are more concerned about the quality of their dying than death itself. Religious commitment is important to most Irish people, and this impacts on their views about medical treatment and care at the end of life. CONCLUSIONS: The study paints a picture of a general public that is not very comfortable with or informed about the processes of dying and death. Great sensitivity is required of health professionals who must negotiate the timing and the context of breaking of bad news with patients and families. Educational interventions, public and organisational policies and legislation need to address the uncertainty that surrounds the role of professionals and families in making decisions for dying patients.

Response conflict as an environmental determinant of gender differences in sensitivity to alcohol impairment.

The majority of research examining gender differences in alcohol impairment has found greater impairment in women. However, some studies report greater responsivity in men, particularly in situations involving competing response tendencies (e.g., inhibitory control and aggression tasks), suggesting that response conflict could account for these contradictory findings. Drawing on data from previous experiments conducted in our laboratory, the current study examined this hypothesis by comparing the alcohol sensitivity of gender groups on a broad range of behavioral tasks. Tasks were categorized as high or low conflict based on whether tasks involved competing response tendencies. Results showed that women displayed greater impairment from alcohol than men on low conflict tasks, and men were more impaired than women on high conflict tasks. These findings suggest that response conflict might play an important role in the occasional and contradictory observations in which men demonstrate more intense behavioral reactions to alcohol than women.