FRIDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) -- Whether you have an easy baby
or a fussy one may have nothing to do with your parenting skills because
the combination of a certain gene and a particular pattern of brain
activity may determine a child's temperament, a new study has found.
Canadian researchers examined the interaction between the DRD4 gene and
activity in the frontal cortex of the brain to find out if it predicted
children's temperament.
Previous studies have suggested that the longer version (allele) of the
DRD4 gene is associated with increased sensory responsiveness,
risk-seeking behavior and attention problems in children. It has also been
determined that infants with more activity in the left frontal cortex are
temperamentally "easy" and take little effort to calm down. On the other
hand, children with more activity in the right frontal cortex are more
easily distressed, more difficult to soothe, and are considered to have a
"negative" temperament.
In this study, Louis Schmidt of McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario, and colleagues measured brain activity in 9-month-old infants.
When the children were 4 years old, their mothers completed questionnaires
about their children's behavior, and DNA samples were taken from the
children for analysis of the DRD4 gene.
The researchers found that children who had more left frontal cortex
activity and had the long version of the DRD4 gene were more easily
soothed at 48 months than those with the shorter version of the gene.
Children with the long version of the gene and with more activity in the
right frontal cortex were the least soothable and had more attention
problems than the other children, according to the study.
The findings "suggest that it is possible that the DRD4 long allele
plays different roles (for better and for worse) in child temperament,"
the researchers said. They added that the pattern of frontal cortex
activity may influence how DRD4 affects a child's temperament.
The study appears online in the journal Psychological
Science.
More information
The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about children's temperament.
