What are endophenotypes in psychiatry?

What are endophenotypes in psychiatry?

Endophenotypes are heritable traits that are derived from laboratory measures such as electroencephalographic anomalies, neurocognitive performance deficits, and impaired facial emotion recognition. They appear in both patients and their unaffected relatives.

Are Endophenotypes heritable?

An endophenotype (also known as intermediate phenotype) is a quantitative biological trait that is reliable in reflecting the function of a discrete biological system and is reasonably heritable, and as such is more closely related to the root cause of the disease than the broad clinical phenotype (Gottesman and Gould.

What are Endophenotypes in schizophrenia?

For schizophrenia In the case of schizophrenia, the overt symptom could be a psychosis, but the underlying phenotypes are, for example, a lack of sensory gating and a decline in working memory. Both of these traits have a clear genetic component and can thus be called endophenotypes.

Is schizophrenia genetic?

Genetics. Schizophrenia tends to run in families, but no single gene is thought to be responsible. It’s more likely that different combinations of genes make people more vulnerable to the condition. However, having these genes does not necessarily mean you’ll develop schizophrenia.

What is a neurocognitive Endophenotype?

In this article, we argue for a biological approach to psychiatry based on ‘neurocognitive endophenotypes’, whereby changes in behavioural or cognitive processes are associated with discrete deficits in defined neural systems.

What is an Endophenotype and why is it important to studying the etiology of schizophrenia?

THE VALUE OF DEEP PHENOTYPING IN SCHIZOPHRENIA RESEARCH Given that endophenotypes fall within the genotype-to-phenotype pathway of the disease process, they form a critical link between genetic risk variants and the more direct lower-level biological processes that contribute to observable symptoms [47,48].

What is the contribution of Endophenotype to the understanding of schizophrenia?

Because we can demonstrate endophenotypes link to both gene networks and neural circuits on the one hand and also to real-life function, endophenotypes provide a critically important bridge for “connecting the dots” between genes, cells, circuits, information processing, neurocognition and functional impairment and …

Are people born with schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is thought to be the result of a culmination of biological and environmental factors. While there is no known cause of schizophrenia, there are genetic, psychological, and social factors thought to play a role in the development of this chronic disorder.