title: Integrating Insults: Using Fault Tree Analysis to Guide Schizophrenia Research across Levels of Analysis.
abstract: The grand challenges of schizophrenia research are linking the causes of the disorder to its symptoms and finding ways to overcome those symptoms. We argue that the field will be unable to address these challenges within psychiatry's standard neo-Kraepelinian (DSM) perspective. At the same time the current corrective, based in molecular genetics and cognitive neuroscience, is also likely to flounder due to its neglect for psychiatry's syndromal structure. We suggest adopting a new approach long used in reliability engineering, which also serves as a synthesis of these approaches. This approach, known as fault tree analysis, can be combined with extant neuroscientific data collection and computational modeling efforts to uncover the causal structures underlying the cognitive and affective failures in people with schizophrenia as well as other complex psychiatric phenomena. By making explicit how causes combine from basic faults to downstream failures, this approach makes affordances for: (1) causes that are neither necessary nor sufficient in and of themselves; (2) within-diagnosis heterogeneity; and (3) between diagnosis co-morbidity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Translational Research in Cognitive and Affective Mechanisms, University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN, USA.
authors.forename: Angus W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: MacDonald Iii
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota School of Medicine Minneapolis, MN, USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Zick
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota School of MedicineMinneapolis, MN, USA; Veterans Affairs Medical CenterMinneapolis, MN, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew V
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Chafee
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN, USA.
authors.forename: Theoden I
authors.initials: TI
authors.lastname: Netoff
keywords: DSM-5; NMDA receptor; fault tree analysis; psychosis; reliability engineering; research domain criteria; schizophrenia