This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (33)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Neurology  • Cognitive Disorders  • Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder  • Schizophrenia  • Genetics  • Genetic Disorders  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

The University of California, Los Angeles Family Study

Robert F. Asarnow, PhD; Keith H. Nuechterlein, PhD; Kenneth L. Subotnik, PhD; David L. Fogelson, MD; Richard D. Torquato, MA; Diana L. Payne, PhD; Joy Asamen, PhD; Jim Mintz, PhD; Donald Guthrie, PhD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2002;59:1053-1060.

Background  We tested the hypotheses that certain neurocognitive impairments index genetic liability to schizophrenia and that childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) is a variant of adult-onset schizophrenia (AOS) by determining whether parents of COS probands show the types of neurocognitive impairments found in relatives of AOS probands.

Methods  Parents of COS probands (n = 79) were compared with parents of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; n = 190) and community control (CC; n = 115) probands on 3 neurocognitive tasks shown in previous research to detect impairments in patients with AOS and ADHD and in the relatives of patients with AOS. Parents with a diagnosis of psychosis were excluded from the study.

Results  On the Degraded Stimulus–Continuous Performance Test and the Trail-Making Test B–Adolescent Version, the parents of COS probands performed significantly worse than the parents of CC and ADHD probands, who did not differ significantly from each other. On the Span of Apprehension, we found no significant group differences. Using rigorous cutoffs, a combination of scores on the 3 neurocognitive tests identified 16 (20%) of the mothers and fathers of COS probands compared with 0% of the mothers and fathers of CC probands. There was diagnostic specificity of the neurocognitive impairments. A combination of neurocognitive scores identified 6 (12%) of the mothers of COS probands vs 0% of the mothers of ADHD probands. A cutoff that identified 2 (2%) of the fathers of ADHD probands classified 5 (17%) of the fathers of COS probands. We found no significant differences in neurocognitive functions between the parents of ADHD and CC probands.

Conclusions  The aggregation of neurocognitive impairments in the parents of COS probands provides further evidence of etiologic continuity between COS and AOS. A substantial subgroup of parents of COS probands had a worse neurocognitive performance than that of any of the parents of ADHD and CC probands. Receiver operating characteristic curves showed that when rigorous cutoffs define neurocognitive impairments, the combination of scores on certain neurocognitive tasks produced a level of diagnostic accuracy in the parents of COS probands that is sufficient for use in genetic linkage studies.

From the Neuropsychiatric Institute and the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences (Drs Asarnow, Nuechterlein, Subotnik, Fogelson, Payne, Asamen, Mintz, and Guthrie and Mr Torquato), the Department of Psychology (Drs Asarnow and Nuechterlein), the Mental Retardation Research Center (Drs Asarnow and Guthrie), and the Department of Biostatistics (Dr Guthrie), University of California, Los Angeles; and the Graduate School of Education and Psychology, Pepperdine University, Malibu, Calif (Dr Asamen).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Oculomotor and Pupillometric Indices of Pro- and Antisaccade Performance in Youth-Onset Psychosis and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
Karatekin et al.
Schizophr Bull 2009;0:sbp035v1-sbp035.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Neurocognitive Allied Phenotypes for Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder
Hill et al.
Schizophr Bull 2008;34:743-759.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Is There an Increased Familial Prevalence of Psychopathology in Children With Nonverbal Learning Disorders?
Antshel and Khan
J Learn Disabil 2008;41:208-217.
ABSTRACT  

The Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia: Neurocognitive Endophenotypes
Gur et al.
Schizophr Bull 2007;33:49-68.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Neural Correlates of Enhanced Genetic Risk for Schizophrenia
Whalley et al.
Neuroscientist 2005;11:238-249.
ABSTRACT