The goal of this review is to summarize the state of the field of genetic psychophysiology, identify current trends, discuss some methodological problems and caveats, and outline future directions in research. It is important to mention that this review is not intended to provide an exhaustive coverage of all genetic studies relevant to psychophysiology; for a detailed discussion review earlier studies, we refer the reader to several excellent reviews published previously (Boomsma et al., 1997; de Geus, 2002; van Beijsterveldt and van Baal, 2002). The present review is limited to traditional measurement modalities in psychophysiology and does not cover the field of so-called “imaging genetics” (genetic studies of fMRI phenotypes) as this line of research deserves a separate review. This review does not cover substantial literature on EEG abnormalities in hereditary neurological disorders such as epilepsy and genetic syndromes such as fragile X and chromosome 22q deletion as these are areas of more specialized clinical interest. Finally, this review does not include studies in animals such as EEG studies in genetic strains of rodents or gene knock-out models.
