title: Early intermodal integration in offspring of parents with psychosis.
abstract: Identifying early developmental indicators of risk for schizophrenia is important for prediction and possibly illness prevention. Disturbed intermodality has been proposed as one important neurodevelopmental risk for schizophrenia. Early intermodal integration (EII) is the infant's ability to link motility and perception and to relate perception across modalities. We hypothesized that infants of parents with schizophrenia would have more EII abnormalities than infants of healthy parents and that infants of parents with affective psychosis would be intermediate in severity. The New England Family Study high-risk sample, ascertained from community populations, was utilized. Eight-month-old infants of parents with schizophrenia (n = 58), affective psychoses (n = 128), and healthy controls (n = 174) were prospectively assessed. Diagnoses of parents were determined 30 years later blind to offspring data. EII measures were grouped into 3 domains characterizing different aspects of infant development: (1) one's own body, (2) objects, and (3) social interactions. Results demonstrated that body- and object-related EII abnormalities were significantly increased for infants of parents with schizophrenia compared with control infants and not significantly increased for infants of parents with affective psychoses. EII abnormalities in relation to social interactions were significantly increased in infants of parents with schizophrenia and affective psychoses. Thus, body- and object-related EII abnormalities were most severe in infants of parents with schizophrenia, supporting the importance of intermodality dysfunction as an early indicator of the vulnerability to schizophrenia. Future research should evaluate how this dysfunction evolves with development and its associations with other psychopathological and neurodevelopmental deficits in youth at risk for psychosis.
authors.affiliation: Center for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Les Toises, Lausanne, Switzerland;
authors.forename: Franziska
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gamma
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Division of Women's Health, Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology, Boston, MA;
authors.forename: Jill M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Goldstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Public Psychiatry Division at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Boston, MA; Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA;
authors.forename: Larry J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Seidman
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA;
authors.forename: Garrett M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Fitzmaurice
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Division of Women's Health, Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology, Boston, MA; Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Public Psychiatry Division at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Boston, MA; Department of Psychiatry, Center for Behavioral Genomics, Institute for Genomic Medicine, University of California, San Diego, CA; Harvard Medical School, Harvard Institute of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Genetics, Boston, MA;
authors.forename: Ming T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Tsuang
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Health, Brown University, Providence, RI; Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, and of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA franziska.gamma@lestoises.ch.
authors.forename: Stephen L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Buka
mesh_terms: D000341:Affective Disorders, Psychotic / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000503:physiopathology*
keywords: developmental psychology; high-risk study; schizophrenia