Psychiatric Genetics

Psychiatric Genetics provides the reader with a complete view of the methodological problems encountered in psychiatry genetics and proposes solutions to commonly occurring questions. The best European and American specialists have given a thorough review on the advantages and disadvantages of genetic epidemiological methods, the way to choose a genetic marker or a clinical interview and how to ascertain patients, unaffected relatives and controls and what should be the criteria to include a case or a control. New phenotypic methods are described focusing on candidate symptom and endophenotype approaches. Examples coming from cognitive neurosciences, biochemistry, electrophysiology and brain imaging techniques are reviewed. This book will serve as an essential handbook for psychiatrists, psychologists, and geneticists involved in the genetics of psychiatric disorders.

Enthusiasm about the role that genetics plays in our understanding of behavioral phenotypes has led to the development of many new epidemiological and statistical strategies, as well as to refinements in phenotype analysis. In Psychiatric Genetics: Methods and Reviews, hands-on experts comprehensively review the tools and methods currently available to uncover the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders, and then demonstrate through archetypical examples how these strategies can be used. Casting their net widely, the authors critically examine the key methodological issues involved in phenotypic analysis-including study design, molecular techniques, clinical interviews, and population sampling methods-and discuss new and alternate strategies that identify candidate symptoms and endophenotypes with better genetic validity. These strategies suggest cognitive intermediate phenotypes in schizophrenia, show how personality disorders may generate biologically mediated traits in the full-blown disorders, and yield data about P50 and P300 as endophenotypes in schizophrenia and alcoholism. One of the most promising approaches for the identification of valid phenotypes-the union of neuropsychological experimental designs and in vivo physiological brain mapping-is also discussed.
Practical and timely, Psychiatric Genetics: Methods and Reviews lays the cornerstone for the new diagnostics in psychiatric genetics-the unraveling of the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders and the development of new therapies through the precise identification of the phenotypes involved.