Transcranial stimulation techniques: which genetics is the best for which purpose?

摘要

In their recent paper in The Journal of Physiology entitled 'Plasticity in human motor cortex is in part genetically determined', Missitzi et al. (2011) show convincingly that interindividual variability in excitability changes of the motor cortex induced by paired associative stimulation (PAS) is reduced in monozygotic twins. They compared PAS variability in 32 healthy female twins, nine monozygotic (MZ) and seven dizygotic (DZ) pairs in an age range of the early twenties. Several interesting findings emerged from this study. First, the intrapair differences in the MEP amplitudes measured 25-30 min after intervention were twice as high for the DZ than for the MZ twins. Accordingly, they calculated a heritability estimate for brain plasticity of 0.68.