Endophenotype Approach to Schizophrenia Research

Doctor Anil Malhotra discusses endophenotype strategies for studying schizophrenia, which can examine neurocognitive function or brain-imaging.

An alternative strategy for finding genes is the so-called endophenotype approach where we look for parts of the illness perhaps that are closer to gene action. Most popularly this has been either neurocognitive function or brain-imaging parameters, where we can collect these neurocognitive measures and brain-imaging measures in healthy controls and in patients with schizophrenia and then do our genetic analyses, where we try to find genes that influence neurocognition and brain-imaging. Perhaps then those genes also influence risks for schizophrenia.