Misplaced your keys or can't remember someone's name? Your genes may be to blame for these memory lapses.
Scientists have found that a gene may be responsible for such everyday memory lapses.
The study from the University of Bonn in Germany found that people who have a certain variant of the DRD2 gene are more easily distracted and experience a significantly higher incidence of lapses due to a lack of attention.
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While short-term memory lapses are very common, some people may experience them particularly often, according to Professor Dr Martin Reuter from the department for Differential and Biological Psychology at the University of Bonn.
"A familial clustering of such lapses suggests that they are subject to genetic effects," said Dr Sebastian Markett, the principal author and a member of Reuter's team.
In lab experiments, the group of scientists had found indications earlier that the so-called dopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2) plays a part in forgetfulness.
DRD2 has an essential function in signal transmission within the frontal lobes.
"This structure can be compared to a director coordinating the brain like an orchestra," Markett added.
In this simile, the DRD2 gene would correspond to the baton, because it plays a part in dopamine transmission in the brain. If the baton skips a beat, the orchestra gets confused, researchers said.
The researchers tested a total of 500 women and men by taking a saliva sample and examining it using methods from molecular biology.
All humans carry the DRD2 gene, which comes in two variants that are distinguished by only one letter within the genetic code. The one variant has C (cytosine) in one locus, which is displaced by T (thymine) in the other.
According to the research team's analyses, about a quarter of the subjects exclusively had the DRD2 gene with the cytosine nucleobase, while three quarters were the genotype with at least one thymine base.
The scientists then wanted to find out whether this difference in the genetic code also had an effect on everyday behaviour.
By means of a self-assessment survey they asked the subjects to state how frequently they experience these lapses-how often they forgot names, misplaced their keys.
The scientists used statistical methods to check whether it was possible to associate the forgetfulness symptoms elicited by means of the surveys to one of the DRD2 gene variants.
The results showed that functions such as attention and memory are less clearly expressed in persons who carry the thymine variant of the gene than in the cytosine type.
"The connection is obvious; such lapses can partially be attributed to this gene variant," said Markett.
The study will be published in the journal Neuroscience Letters.
