Structural Cerebral Variations as Useful Endophenotypes in Schizophrenia: Do They Help Construct “Extended Endophenotypes”?
Journal Title: Schizophrenia Bulletin - Year , Vol 34, Issue 4
Abstract
Endophenotypes represent intermediate phenotypes on the putative causal pathway from the genotype to the phenotype. They offer a potentially valuable strategy to examine the molecular etiopathology of complex behavioral phenotypes such as schizophrenia. Neurocognitive and neurophysiological impairments that suggest functional impairments associated with schizophrenia have been proposed as endophenotypes. However, few studies have examined the structural variations in the brain that might underlie the functional impairments as useful endophenotypes for schizophrenia. Over the past three decades, there has been an impressive body of literature supporting brain structural alterations in schizophrenia. We critically reviewed the extant literature on the neuroanatomical variations in schizophrenia in this paper to evaluate their candidacy as endophenotypes and how useful they are in furthering the understanding of etiology and pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Brain morphometric measures meet many of the criteria set by different investigators, such as being robustly associated with schizophrenia, heritable, quantifiable, and present in unaffected family members more frequently than in the general population. We conclude that the brain morphometric alterations appear largely to meet the criteria for endophenotypes in psychotic disorders. Some caveats for the utility of endophenotypes are discussed. A proposal to combine more than one endophenotype (“extended endophenotype”) is suggested. Further work is needed to examine how specific genes and their interactions with the environment may produce alterations in brain structure and function that accompany psychotic disorders.
Authors and Affiliations
Konasale M. Prasad, Matcheri S. Keshavan
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP683289
- DOI 10.1093/schbul/sbn017
- Views 97
- Downloads 0
The Translation of Cognitive Paradigms for Patient Research
Many cognitive tasks have been developed by basic scientists to isolate and measure specific cognitive processes in healthy young adults, and these tasks have the potential to provide important information about cognitiv...
Structural Cerebral Variations as Useful Endophenotypes in Schizophrenia: Do They Help Construct “Extended Endophenotypes”?
Endophenotypes represent intermediate phenotypes on the putative causal pathway from the genotype to the phenotype. They offer a potentially valuable strategy to examine the molecular etiopathology of complex behavioral...
Social Cognition in Schizophrenia
Social cognition in schizophrenia is a rapidly emerging area of study. Because the number and diversity of studies in this area have increased, efforts have been made to better define terms and provide organizing framewo...
Current Psychopathological Issues in Psychosis: Towards a Phenome-wide Scanning Approach
Supported in part by a grant of the Health Department of the Navarre Government, Spain (55/2007).
Building a Clinically Relevant Cognitive Task: Case Study of the AX Paradigm
Tasks developed for basic cognitive neuroscience are often ill suited for experimental psychopathology. The development of the expectancy variant of AX continuous performance task to test theories about context processin...