Research to understand variability at the highest end of the cognitive performance has been scarce. The aims of this study focused on defining a cognitive endophenotype based on exceptional episodic memory performance and to investigate familial aggregation of exceptional episodic memory in families from the Long Life Family Study. Using a sample of 1911 nondemented offspring of long-lived probands, they created a quantitative phenotype, exceptional episodic memory (EM; memory z ≥ 1.5), and classified families as EM and non-EM based on the number of offspring with exceptional episodic memory. They assessed differences in memory performance between relatives in the parental generation of EM families and those in non-EM families using multivariate analysis adjusted for Apolipoprotein E genotype. Apolipoprotein E4 is a well-known risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and APOE genotype is known to interact with the environment and age to produce changes in cognitive functioning. The study demonstrated a familial correlation of the exceptional episodic memory endophenotype, suggesting that genetic variants might influence memory performance in long-lived families.
Barral S, Cosentino S, Costa R, Andersen SL, Christensen K, Eckfeldt JH, Newman AB, Perls TT, Province MA, Hadley EC, Rossi WK, Mayeux R: Exceptional memory performance in the Long Life Family Study. Neurobiol. Aging 34(11): 2445-2448 (2013).
