A brief introduction to the neurogenetics of cognition-emotion interactions

Neuroscience research has demonstrated that cognition, emotion, and their dynamic interactions emerge from complex and flexible patterns of activity across distributed neural circuits. A parallel branch of research in genetics has begun to identify common variation in the human DNA sequence (i.e., genome) that may shape individual differences in cognition-emotion interactions by altering molecular and cellular pathways that modulate the activity of these neural circuits. Here we provide a brief introduction to neurogenetics research and how it may usefully inform our understanding of the biological mechanisms through which dynamic cognition-emotion interactions emerge and, subsequently, help shape normal and abnormal behavior.