This article is part of the supplement: International Society on Brain and Behaviour: 3rd International Congress on Brain and Behaviour .

Oral presentation

Substantial genetic overlap between neurocognition and schizophrenia: genetic modeling in twin samples

Timothea Toulopoulou^1,2, Marco Picchioni¹, Fruhling Rijsdijk³, Mei Hua-Hall^1,4, Ulrich Ettinger¹, Pak Sham^3,5 and Robin Murray¹

¹  Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK

²  Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, USA

³  Social Genetic Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre (SGDP), Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, UK

⁴  Psychology Research Laboratory, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA

⁵  Department of Psychiatry, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

corresponding author email

from International Society on Brain and Behaviour: 3rd International Congress on Brain and Behaviour
Thessaloniki, Greece. 28 November – 2 December 2007

Annals of General Psychiatry 2008, 7(Suppl 1):S8doi:10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S8

Published:	17 April 2008

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

Results from the first study to use twin modelling to quantify the genetic overlap between schizophrenia and neuropsychological function will be presented (recently published [1]). In the largest UK study of twins with schizophrenia two hundred sixty seven twins were invited to complete a comprehensive series of intelligence and memory tests. Both identical and non-identical twins took part, in some pairs both twins were affected by the illness and in others only one twin. Sophisticated genetic modelling statistical analyses were then used to determine to what extent the intelligence deficits were related to the genetic risk for the illness.The study reported a significant correlation between intelligence and schizophrenia with 92% of the covariance between the two accounted for by shared genetic variance. Genetic influences also explained most of the covariance between working memory and schizophrenia. Environmental effects, though separately linked to neurocognition and schizophrenia did not in general contribute to their correlation. The implication of the study is that Intelligence and working memory may be the key to identifying the genes for schizophrenia.