The evidence here indicates that a small part of the effect of GABRA2 on alcoholism is mediated through a specific facet of behavior, namely, impulsiveness. The extent to which this behavioral trait has an underlying genetic component is just starting to be understood. Previously, we reported an association of two GABRA2 SNPs with impulsiveness, a facet from the Neuroticism domain in the NEO-PI-R. Here, we tested these two SNPs and nine additional SNPs with the NEO-impulsiveness, and also with a developmentally constructed, life course measure of alcohol problems, LAPS. Ten SNPs were associated with impulsiveness and four of these were also associated with LAPS, before correcting for multiple testing. The alleles associated with higher scores for both impulsiveness and LAPS correspond to the same haplotype (minor alleles) previously described in other studies reporting an association of GABRA2 variation with both alcoholism (Edenberg and Foroud, 2006, Fehr et al., 2006) and brain oscillations (Edenberg et al., 2004). Motivated by our previous finding (Villafuerte et al., 2012) and by a recent report in a sample of college students where higher scores on
