Loading...
Two studies have addressed the value of endophenotypes (discrete, objective, measurable traits or markers) in transcending descriptive diagnoses in predicting the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders and, eventually, providing treatment.
In 1533 schizophrenia patients and healthy controls (mean age, 42), Greenwood and colleagues examined genetic linkages to 11 neurophysiologic and neurocognitive endophenotypes common in schizophrenia (these were related to inhibition, attention, vigilance, learning, working memory, episodic memory, executive function, and social cognition). Several regions on different chromosomes containing genes involved in cellular and neurodevelopmental structures and processes were associated with seven endophenotypes;…