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Dysregulation of emotional arousal is observed in many psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia, mood and anxiety disorders. The neurotrophic tyrosine kinase receptor type 2 gene (NTRK2) has been associated with these disorders. Here we investigated the relation between genetic variability of NTRK2 and emotional arousal in healthy young subjects in two independent samples (n1=1171; n2=707). In addition, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data in a subgroup of 342 participants were used to identify NTRK2-related white-matter structure differences. After correction for multiple testing, we identified a NTRK2 single nucleotide polymorphism associated with emotional arousal in both samples (n1: Pnominal=0.0003, Pcorrected=0.048; n2: Pnominal=0.0141, Pcorrected=0.036). DTI revealed significant, whole-brain corrected correlations between emotional arousal and brain white-matter mean diffusivity (MD), as well as significant, whole-brain corrected NTRK2 genotype-related differences in MD (PFWE<0.05). Our study demonstrates that genetic variability of NTRK2, a susceptibility gene for psychiatric disorders, is related to emotional arousal and-independently-to brain white-matter properties in healthy individuals.
