University of Bonn researchers have linked a variant of the DRD2 gene to forgetfulness, the Huffington Post reports.
Martin Reuter and his colleagues at Bonn collected buccal swabs from 500 participants for genotyping and had the participants complete cognitive failure questionnaires that measure people's susceptibility to forgetfulness. For instance, the questionnaire asks people to say how often a certain scenario occurs in their life, such as forgetting to turn the lights off or bumping into people. A subset of participants also completed a questionnaire gauging impulsiveness.
From this, they found that the homozygous C/C variant of DRD2 rs6277 appeared to be protective against everyday cognitive failure as compared to people with at least one T allele, as they report in Neuroscience Letters.
But just because you have this genotype doesn't mean you'll forever be scouring the house for your keys, Reuter notes. "There are things you can do to compensate for forgetfulness; writing yourself notes or making more of an effort to put your keys down in a specific location — and not just anywhere," he says in a statement.