It is an important scientific objective to characterize the genetic basis of the large neurophysiological and neuroanatomical changes occurring in adolescence, which influence the cognitive and affective processes underlying behavioral changes. Twin studies suggest that there are genetic effects on P3 electrophysiological measures obtained in target detection tasks during adolescent development (Katsanis et al., 1997; van Beijsterveldt et al., 1998, 2001; Carlson and Iacono, 2006). A considerable number of studies have found high degrees of heritability for structural brain features measured in adolescents (see Douet et al. (2014) for a review) which exhibit a variety of developmental patterns as described above. Gene expression studies suggest large variations in gene expression during adolescence, both in humans and in rodents (Colantuoni et al., 2011; Kang et al., 2011; Naumova et al., 2013; Stead et al., 2006). Thus it might be expected that there would be considerable age variation in association between SNPs and neurophysiological measures during adolescence. To this end, genetic variants which have been shown to have a considerable association with neurophysiological measures in adults and in which the genetic factors are known to be related to cognitive function are attractive candidates for analysis.
