In the resulting sample of 69 participants (age 18–35; 34 women): 17 men were homozygous for the Val-allele, 16 were Val-homozygous females, and there were 18 Met-carrier

men and women. The BDNF genotype-by-sex-by-angle interaction (baseline, easier, more difficult angles) in the mixed within and between subjects 3 × 2 × 2 repeated measures ANOVA was significant (F (1, 65) = 4.01, P = 0.028). We did not observe significant Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical main effects for sex (F (1, 65) = 0.74, P = ns) or for BDNF genotype (F (1, 65) = 1.8, P = 0.17). The between-groups BDNF by sex interaction across all angles was also significant (F (1, 65) = 3.95, P = 0.049). Because of the role of BDNF in brain maturation, we controlled for age by using age as a covariate, this covariate, however, was not significant and removing it did not change the results. To explore the BDNF genotype by sex interaction further, we performed a split-file analysis, which revealed a significant between group difference between Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Val-homozygous females and Met-carrier females (P = 0.044; see Fig. 2), especially in the most difficult angles. No such effects were observed

Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in the male groups. These results suggest that across all angles, Val-homozygous females perform worse on the difficult angles compared with the easier angles as, expected from their baseline AUC scores. Figure 2 Area under the Curve (AUC) compared to baseline. The AUC relative to the baseline is shown for 45 (baseline), 60 and 30 (easier), and 70 and 20 (more difficult) degree angles. A higher score indicates less accuracy relative to baseline. For difficult … Discussion We provide the first evidence that BDNF genotype and sex interact

to influence the motor performance Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in a bimanual Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical motor control task in females, but not in males. Interestingly, the BDNF by sex interaction was only apparent in the more difficult conditions of the task. This is striking, considering earlier work (Cousijn et al. 2010), which showed that genotype effects may only become apparent under circumstances in which the system is particularly challenged. The current findings show both the importance of taking sex into account when investigating the role of BDNF genotype, no and to use challenging tasks in order to find differences that otherwise would not have been found. Currently, most of the literature on BDNF and the motor domain consist of various measurements of motor learning, such as cortical map size (Kleim et al. 2006), motor cortex excitability (Cheeran et al. 2009), and click here long-term motor learning (McHughen et al. 2010). This line of research may have emerged from earlier studies on BDNF, and learning and memory processes (Egan et al. 2003; Hariri et al. 2003; Pezawas et al. 2004). The results we report here seem to contradict the existing literature for BDNF genotype effects in the motor cortex.