Objective Neurocognitive impairments in schizophrenia are well replicated and widely regarded as candidate endophenotypes that may facilitate understanding of schizophrenia genetics and pathophysiology. The Project Among African-Americans to Explore Risks for Schizophrenia (PAARTNERS) aims to identify genes underlying liability to schizophrenia. The unprecedented size of its study group (N=1,872), made possible through use of a computerized neurocognitive battery, can help further investigation of the genetics of neurocognition. The current analysis evaluated two characteristics not fully addressed in prior research: 1) heritability of neurocognition in African American families and 2) relationship between neurocognition and psychopathology in families of African American probands with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Method Across eight data collection sites, patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (N=610), their biological relatives (N=928), and community comparison subjects (N=334) completed a standardized diagnostic evaluation and the computerized neurocognitive battery. Performance accuracy and response time (speed) were measured separately for 10 neurocognitive domains. Results The patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder exhibited less accuracy and speed in most neurocognitive domains than their relatives both with and without other psychiatric disorders, who in turn were more impaired than comparison subjects in most domains. Estimated trait heritability after inclusion of the mean effect of diagnostic status, age, and sex revealed significant heritabilities for most neurocognitive domains, with the highest for accuracy of abstraction/ flexibility, verbal memory, face memory, spatial processing, and emotion processing and for speed of attention. Conclusions Neurocognitive functions in African American families are heritable and associated with schizophrenia. They show potential for gene-mapping studies.

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Does the learned helplessness model of depression apply to clinically depressed patients and is it specific to depression? Changes in expectancy following success and failure in skill and chance tasks were assessed for depressed nonschizophrenics (unipolar depressives), depressed schizophrenics, nondepressed schizophrenics, and normal controls. The unipolar depressives showed smaller changes in expectancy of future success after failure in the skill task than did the normal controls and both schizophrenic groups. Depressed schizophrenics did not show smaller expectancy changes than nondepressed schizophrenics. The learned helplessness model has been tested primarily in populations with subclinical depression; the present results provide partial support for learned helplessness as a model of one type of severe clinical depression and suggest that learned helplessness is not a general feature of psychopathology.

Latent/persistent herpes virus infections can be associated with cognitive impairments regardless of other health status.

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