Genetic factors in inward vs outward personality Organizations: focus on HTR2A polymorphisms

Abstract

Introduction

Reciprocity with primary caregivers drives subjects’ adaptive abilities towards the construction of a Personal Meaning Organization (PMO) that is useful with respect to their developmental environment. Those with inward personalities read environmental signals through their internal activations; those with outward personalities read internal activations through the environment. It has recently been shown that PMO development may also have physiological and genetic bases. Because the serotonin receptor 2A gene (HTR2A) is one of the serotoninergic genes associated with personality and behaviour, it is expected to exert an influence on PMO development. The aim of this work was to explore possible correlations between HTR2A gene single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and the inward/outward PMO.

Materials and methods

We enrolled 149 healthy, unrelated members of our hospital staff (65 males, 84 females; mean ages 42 ± 10.3 and 37.6 ± 8.7, respectively). Each was classified as having an inward or outward PMO by two trained psychotherapists using a Post-Rationalist Clinical Interview and two self-rating questionnaires for PMO. A mini-sequencing assay was used to assess 20 SNPs at the HTR2A locus in genomic DNA samples from each participant.

Results

Three intronic HTR2A SNPs (rs2770304, rs55948462, and rs61948318) were found to be associated with the development of an inward rather than an outward PMO.

Conclusions

These preliminary results indicate that gene polymorphisms can influence the outcome of PMO development. The gene associations identified in this study support the view that attachment behaviour is also genetically based. This evidence is clinically relevant for a better understanding of the efficacy of pharmacological and psychotherapeutic strategies, and it suggests that further investigation is warranted to discover new associations between PMO development and serotonin gene variants.