Environment In Schizophrenia Research Articles

A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Paradigm of Expressed Emotion in Schizophrenia

Chronic exposure to adverse interpersonal environment in schizophrenia is associated with vulnerability to relapse. The construct of expressed emotion (EE) measures the quality of interpersonal environment, of which criticism is a main component. To use functional magnetic resonance imaging and to investigate the neural basis of vulnerability of schizophrenic patients to EE, the effects of critical comments on brain mechanisms in 11 patients with schizophrenia were examined, comparing evoked responses to familiar (key relative) and unfamiliar (matched stranger) critical and neutral commentary. High EE stimuli evoked enhanced activation of brain regions concerned with the processing of aversive social information. Activations in the right BA44, rostral anterior cingulate, middle superior frontal gyrus, bilateral middle frontal gyrus, left temporal pole, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left insula were significantly modulated to familiar criticism. Such a pattern of neural response may represent a putative neural network responsible for mediating High EE in schizophrenia.

S07.04 Joint effects of genotype and environment in schizophrenia

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Heredity and environment in schizophrenia, revisited. The contribution of twin and high-risk studies.

Life history study of monozygotic (MZ) twins discordant for schizophrenia led to the 1967 hypothesis that phenotypic schizophrenia was an expression of genotypic vulnerability interacting with prenatal and/or perinatal environmental experience. This report is a selected review of partial answers to five questions facing research efforts that have attempted to clarify the interactive gene-environment model of schizophrenia. Follow-up study of the offspring of MZ twins with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and their MZ co-twins without schizophrenia demonstrated equal rates of schizophrenia; hence, each group of offspring carried equal genetic vulnerability for schizophrenia. Magnetic resonance imaging study of MZ discordant twins found that phenotypic schizophrenia was characterized by brain ventricular enlargement and hippocampal reduction in 87-93% of the schizophrenic twins, when compared with their nonschizophrenic co-twins. A longitudinal study of teenage children at differential risk for schizophrenia showed that brain ventricular enlargement in adulthood correlated significantly and positively with genetic risk for schizophrenia and number of perinatal complications, and negatively with birth weight. Significantly greater dysmorphological hand skin signs among schizophrenic MZ twins when compared with their nonschizophrenic co-twins have suggested an in utero second trimester fetal developmental abnormality for the schizophrenic subjects. Simultaneous neuroanatomic, neurophysiological, and neurocognitive evaluation of MZ twin pairs discordant for schizophrenia demonstrated decreased prefrontal physiological cerebral blood flow activation during Wisconsin Card Sorting Test for affected twins correlated with decreased hippocampal volume determined by magnetic resonance imaging. These neurocognitive studies have suggested that schizophrenia involves neocortical-limbic pathology and dysfunction implicated in performance of cognitive tasks requiring working memory.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Heredity and environment in schizophrenia. The contribution of twin studies.

SCHIZOPHRENIA and other disordered emotional states did not come under scientific scrutiny until early in the 20th century. With the advent of mendelian genetics in 1865 came the promise that many human traits previously unaccounted for might be explained on the basis of genetic inheritance. The Danish biologist, Johannsen, introduced the concept that the phenotype or the external appearance of an organism represented the result of the interplay of the genotype, the total sum of genes in the organism, and the environment in which the organism found itself. 1 Galton in 1876 was impressed with the idea that the nurture-nature problem might be resolved through the study of twins. 2 In respect to mental illness, European investigators have tended toward acceptance of the nature side of what appeared as a dialectical issue, in that mental illness was seen as primarily genetically

Schizophrenia in twins: 16 years' consecutive admissions to a psychiatric clinic.

Recent developments in the vexed questions of the relative importance to be attributed to genetic and environmental factors in the aetiology of schizophrenia, and the manner in which they interact to produce a phenotypic psychosis, are highlighted by David Rosenthal's series of critical papers (1959–1962) on twin and family studies and the book edited by him chronicling the lives of a set of monozygotic quadruplets all concordant for schizophrenia (1963). In his thorough and open-minded critique Rosenthal argues that previously reported concordance rates for monozygotic (MZ) twins have been misleadingly high. To this point we shall return in a moment. Rosenthal finally concludes that “the best information we now have with respect to the whole broad question of heredity and environment in schizophrenia, is to be found mainly in the five major studies of twins.” Unlike some who have pointed out weaknesses in the studies, he believes that “our task is to determine their source, extent and implications, not to dismiss them offhandedly because they contain errors” (1962a, p. 132).

Book Review: The Genain Quadruplets

Book Review: The Genain Quadruplets

Book Review: The Genain Quadruplets: A Study of Heredity and Environment in Schizophrenia

Book Review: The Genain Quadruplets: A Study of Heredity and Environment in Schizophrenia

The Genain Quadruplets: A Case Study and Theoretical Analysis of Heredity and Environment in Schizophrenia.

The Genain Quadruplets: A Case Study and Theoretical Analysis of Heredity and Environment in Schizophrenia.

Book Reviews

Abstract Farberow, N. L., (Ed.), Taboo Topics, New York: Atherton Press, 1963. xviii, 140 pp., $4.50. Reviewed by Robert Rosenthal. Rosenthal, David, (Ed.), The Genain Quadruplets. A case study and theoretical analysis of heredity and environment in schizophrenia, New York, Basic Books, 1963, 609 p. $12.50. Reviewed by Steven G. Vandenberg. Festschrift Leopold Szondi, Monograph from the Swiss Journal of Psychology and Its Applications, 1963, Verlag Hans Huber, Bern. Reviewed by Walter G. Klopfer.

The Genain Quadruplets: A Case Study and Theoretical Analysis of Heredity and Environment in Schizophrenia

An unprecedented opportunity for the study of heredity and environment in mental illness was presented by monozygotic quadruplets, all schizophrenic. The National Institute of Mental Health, undertaking such a study, had these four girls live at the Institute for three years and subjected them and their parents to a variety of investigative procedures. Unfortunately, there seems to have been little advance planning. Rosenthal, the editor of the report and author of several chapters, apparently was not part of the original research team, but has made a valiant effort to coordinate the mass of accumulated data. Relatively little information is offered about possible inheritance, although the artificial name chosen,Genain, means dreadful gene. A geneticist explains why he considered the probability was over 99% that these quads were truly monozygotic. It is mentioned that the paternal grandmother may have had paranoid schizophrenia, but no other data concerning family history of mental

David rosenthal (Editor). The genain quadruplets: A case study and theoretical analysis of heredity and environment in Schizophrenia. New York: Basic Books, 1963

David rosenthal (Editor). The genain quadruplets: A case study and theoretical analysis of heredity and environment in Schizophrenia. New York: Basic Books, 1963

David rosenthal (editor). The genain quadruplets: A case study and theoretical analysis of heredity and environment in Schizophrenia. New York: Basic Books, 1963

David rosenthal (editor). The genain quadruplets: A case study and theoretical analysis of heredity and environment in Schizophrenia. New York: Basic Books, 1963