Emotional Voice Processing: Investigating the Role of Genetic Variation in the Serotonin Transporter across Development

The ability to effectively respond to emotional information carried in the human voice plays a pivotal role for social interactions. We examined how genetic factors, especially the serotonin transporter genetic variation (5-HTTLPR), affect the neurodynamics of emotional voice processing in infants and adults by measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs). The results revealed that infants distinguish between emotions during an early perceptual processing stage, whereas adults recognize and evaluate the meaning of emotions during later semantic processing stages. While infants do discriminate between emotions, only in adults was genetic variation associated with neurophysiological differences in how positive and negative emotions are processed in the brain. This suggests that genetic association with neurocognitive functions emerges during development, emphasizing the role that variation in serotonin plays in the maturation of brain systems involved in emotion recognition.