They Cut You Off and Blame Their Genes

A small study by neurologists at UC-Irvine suggests that people with a gene variant that limits the availability of brain-derived neurotrophic factor do about 20 percent worse on driving tests than people with the common variant. Previously, it had been shown that people with the variant have a smaller portion of their brain stimulated when doing a task and it is linked to slower recovery from a stroke. "We wanted to study motor behavior, something more complex than finger-tapping," says lead author Stephanie McHughen, to Scientific Blogging. "Driving seemed like a good choice because it has a learning curve and it's something most people know how to do." The study was published in Cerebral Cortex.