Structural brain correlates of an operationally defined high-risk phenotype for schizophrenia: a population based study

精神分裂症是一种主要的精神疾病，它会影响大约1%的人口，并产生毁灭性的影响。钥匙？精神病？症状包括幻觉和妄想以及情绪，动机和智力问题。最近的研究表明，许多人都有类似的症状，但只有少数人会发展成全面的疾病。研究那些有症状的人？有风险吗精神分裂症的症状可能会告诉我们很多关于导致这种疾病的原因。这样做的一个方法是利用一个大规模的人口调查，称为雅芳家长和儿童纵向研究（ALSPAC）。这项研究跟踪了数千名在雅芳出生的人，看看他们可能会出现什么健康问题。ALSPAC中的人现在大约17岁，正在研究他们中哪些人有这些精神病样症状。我们建议在这项工作的基础上，选择一组有代表性的有症状和没有症状的人，并要求他们进行MRI扫描。MRI是一种常用且非常安全的脑部扫描技术。它显示了大脑的详细结构，包括灰质和白色物质。然后可以应用统计技术，将挑选出两组之间不同的任何区域。我们预测某些区域将异常，如果是这样，这将大大增加我们对疾病的理解，甚至可能导致新的治疗方法或预防临床疾病表现的方法。

Schizophrenia is THE major psychiatric disorder and it affects around 1% of the population in their lifetime with devastating effects. Key ?psychotic? symptoms include hallucinations, and delusions as well as problems with emotions, motivation and intellect. It has recently been shown that many people have similar symptoms but only a few go on to develop the full-blown illness. Studying people with symptoms alone who are ?at risk? of schizophrenia is likely to teach us a lot about what it is that causes the illness. One way of doing this is to make use of a large survey of the population known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). This has been following several thousand people born in Avon to see what health problems they might develop. The people in ALSPAC are now about 17 years old and are being studied to see which of them has these psychotic-like symptoms. We propose to build on this work by selecting a representative group of those with and those without symptoms and asking them to have an MRI scan. MRI is a commonly used and very safe brain scanning technique. It shows up the detailed structured of the brain, both grey and white matter. Statistical techniques can then be applied which will pick out any areas that are different between the two groups. We predict that certain areas will be abnormal and if so this will greatly increase our understanding of the illness and may even lead to new treatments or ways of preventing the clinical disorder manifesting itself.