Schizophrenia is a widely investigated psychiatric condition, and though there have been claims of gene "associations," decades of molecular genetic studies have failed to produce confirmed causative genes. In this book, Joseph focuses on the methodological shortcomings of schizophrenia genetic research. His findings have major implications not only on how we understand the causes of schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions, but also on how we understand the causes of human behavior in general. Chapters explore the differing theoretical concepts of schizophrenia, molecular genetic research around schizophrenia, family, twin, and adoption studies, and non-medical prevention and intervention strategies. Prominent researchers and studies in the field are discussed and critiqued comprehensively throughout. This book is essential reading for psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral scientists, and anyone interested in the causes of human behavior.

This is a well-established international series that examines major areas of basic and clinical research within neuroscience (as well as emerging and promising subfields): neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neuroimaging, neurobiology, neuropharmacology, neuroendocrinology, neuropathology, neuropsychiatry, and neurobehavior. This volume provides a thorough treatment of gene models of schizophrenia, presenting articles from leading contributors in this important area.

This book presents a long-term study in genetic isolates of indigenous small ethnics of Dagestan, located in the North-East part of Caucasus in Russia. Dagestan is characterized by extreme cultural and linguistic differences in a small geographic area and contains 26 indigenous ethnic groups. According to archeological data these indigenous highland ethnics have been living in the same area for more than ten thousand years. Our long-term population-genetic study of Dagestan indigenous ethnic groups indicates their close relation to each other and suggests that they evolved from one common ancestral meta-population. Dagestan has an extremely high genetic diversity between ethnic populations and a low genetic diversity within them. Such genetic isolates are exceptional resources for the detection of susceptibility genes for complex diseases because of the reduction in genetic and clinical heterogeneity. The founder effect and gene drift in these primary isolates may have caused aggregation of specific haplotypes with limited numbers of pathogenic alleles and loci in some isolates relative to others. The book presents a study in four ethnically and demographically diverse genetic isolates with aggregation of schizophrenia that we ascertained within our Dagestan Genetic Heritage Research Project. The results obtained support the notion that mapping genes of any complex disease (e.g., schizophrenia) in demographically older genetic isolates may be more time and cost effective due to their high clinical and genetic homogeneity, in comparison with demographically younger isolates, especially with genetically heterogeneous outbred populations.

Schizophrenia is a multi-factorial disease characterized by a high heritability and environmental risk factors (e.g. stress and cannabis use). In recent years, an increasing number of researchers worldwide have started investigating the ‘two-hit hypothesis’ of schizophrenia predicting that genetic and environmental risk factors interactively cause the development of the disorder. This work is starting to produce valuable new animal models and reveal novel insights into the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Eventually, it might help advance studies of the molecular pathways involved in this mental disorder and propose more specific molecular medicine. However, the complexity of this multi-factorial line of research has also caused difficulties in data interpretation and comparison. Our research topic is intended to cover past and current directions in research dedicated to the understanding and measurement of gene-environment interactions (GxE) in schizophrenia, the neurobiological and behavioural consequences of such interactions as well as the challenges and limitations one encounters when working on complex aetiological systems.

The positive versus negative distinction of schizophrenic disorders has pro moted ongoing research. Phenomenology, psychopathology, biology, genet ics, pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatment, psychosocial and longitudinal research: all have found a new focus of interest. This volume attempts to provide an unbiased picture of the status of American and Eu ropean knowledge regarding the positive/negative distinction. Researchers from North America and Europe describe the relation of modern concepts of positive and negative symptomatology to the original models of Rey nolds and Jackson. Integrating phenomenological, genetic, and biological factors, the authors depict current methods of assessing positive and nega tive symptomatology, differentiating between primary and secondary symp tomatology, and using pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatment. The stability of positive and negative symptoms over time and evidence for the occurrence of separate positive and negative episodes over a long-term course of schizophrenia are extensively discussed in terms of their implica tions on the positive/negative construct. The relevance of the positive/nega tive dichotomy to child and adolescent schizophrenia is also debated. The main aim of this book is not to advocate a single concept and present only arguments supporting it, but to discuss important controversies. Prob lems concerning a concept cannot be solved by ignoring them. However, unanswered questions may be resolved through discussion, debate, and con structive compromise.

In this book, with the involvement not only of clinical psychiatrists but also of neurobiologists, specific issues of psychotic disorders (mainly schizophrenia and mood disorders) are reviewed. The focus of attention ranges from therapeutics to the new frontiers of epigenetics. A special focus is on the individual reactions to psychosis (ranging from psychological ones to treatments and neurobiological basis). Because of the rapid development of neurosciences, which are showing common underling factors to different phenotypical expressions of mental illness, we are facing an enormous growth of biological data, which is not always easy to interpret. The risk is to forget that we are relating to other individuals, with their stories, and, most of all, with their environmental resources and interactions. The contributions to this book will range from individual experience (a personal history of illness) through some aspects of individual management of illness (insight), from correct use of available psychosocial resources to the environment-gene relationships (epigenetics).

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