Chidhood precursors of psychiosis as clues to its evolutionary orgins

Abstract

Those who as adults will be admitted to a psychiatric ward with a psychotic illness can be distinguished (on the basis of group differences) from others by their behaviour and academic performance at the ages of 7 and 11 years. Pre-schizophrenic boys are anxious and hostile towards adults and peers at the age of 7 years and show poor concentration. By age 11 years these boys are also rated as depressed, and pre-schizophrenic girls as depressed and withdrawn. Pre-affective psychotic boys show minor changes (for example an increase in hostility and restlessness) at age 7 years, although these features are not obvious at age 11 years. Abnormalities that in some respects resemble those in pre-schizophrenic boys are present at age 11 years in a group of females who will be admitted to psychiatric units with non-psychotic diagnoses by the age of 28 years. Academic impairments (including speech and reading difficulties) at ages 7, 11 and 16 years are more severe in pre-schizophrenics than in the other groups. Schizophrenics-to-be are slow to develop continence and show poor coordination and vision at age 7 years, and are rated clumsy at age 16 years. Psychosis reflects a disturbance of aspects of central nervous system function that are time-dependent and in certain respects gender specific. It is argued that the psychoses represent extremes of variation in a gene (or genes) that differs between sexes and controls the timing of development of the two cerebral hemispheres.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

The persistence of developmental markers in childhood and adolescence and risk for schizophrenic psychoses in adult life. A 34-year follow-up of the Northern Finland 1966 birth cohort

“…Crow et al (1995) observed some continuity in academic abilities in pre-schizophrenic children at age 7, 11 and 16 years and Cannon et al (2002) in motor and also other domains between ages 3 and 11. Rosso et al (2000) demonstrated that deviance on motor coordination at age 7 as well as unusual movements at ages 4 and 7 predicted adult schizophrenia.…”

“…Crow et al (1995) studied the UK 1958 birth cohort where preschizophrenic children at age 7 had been slower to develop continence and had poor coordination and vision; at age 7, 11 and 16 they had poorer academic performance, 4 and at age 16 they were rated as clumsy. Findings consistent with abnormal development of motor co-ordination in the non-academic domain during school years at ages 7 to 11 years have also been reported by Cannon et al (1999) in a large, population-based nested case-control study in Helsinki 1951-1960 well as in a smaller case-control study by Helling et al (2003).…”

“…Walker's (1994) classic study of home movies obtained from families where one child later 5 developed schizophrenia indicated that gross but transient abnormal motor behaviour was most pronounced during the first two years of life, but found some evidence of "catching-up" in later years of childhood. In the UK 1958 birth cohort (Crow et al, 1995) problems in social adjustment and school performance detected in preschizophrenic children at age 7 were still present (manifest as differences in group means) at follow-up at the age of 11. In the Philadelphia cohort of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project (Rosso et al, 2000) deviance on motor coordination at age 7 as well as unusual movements at ages 4 and 7 predicted adult schizophrenia, but there was no additional predictive value from assessments of motor functioning later in childhood (teenage years).…”

Preserved, deteriorated, and premorbidly impaired patterns of intellectual ability in schizophrenia.

“…There are numerous retrospective estimates of low premorbid function (e.g., Torrey, Bowler, Taylor, & Gottesman, 1994) and there are recent reports documenting low IQ in a substantial proportion of children and adolescents who later develop schizophrenia (e.g., Cannon et al, 2000Cannon et al, , 2002Khandaker et al, 2011). In addition, large birth cohorts have found that individuals who later develop schizophrenia were often delayed in achieving neuromotor developmental milestones, have premorbid speech abnormalities, and have on average lower levels of educational achievement (Crow, Done, & Sacker, 1995;Poulton et al, 2000, Sorensen et al, 2010. Jones and colleagues (1994) using the 1946 birth cohort, obtained premorbid cognitive scores and found impairments in the educational test scores at ages 8, 11, and 15 of participants who later developed schizophrenia, and this was unrelated to the sex or social class of the subject.…”

An fMRI study of language processing in people at high genetic risk for schizophrenia

“…Some past epidemiological and clinical reports indicate that this may have resulted from an early developmental problem as evidenced from noted delays in language acquisition and reading abilities (e.g. Crow et al, 1995;DeLisi et al, 1991). Recent fMRI studies provoking activation with a language production paradigm in patients who already have the diagnosis of acute or chronic schizophrenia (Boksman et al, 2005;Kircher et al, 2001Kircher et al, , 2005Koeda et al, 2006;Kubicki et al, 2003;Sommer et al, 2001Sommer et al, , 2003Weiss et al, 2006) and in those during the prodromal stage prior to illness onset and/or at high-genetic risk for illness (Whalley et al, 2004(Whalley et al, , 2005(Whalley et al, , 2006 have shown disruption in the normal lateralized activation in the frontal and temporal cortical circuits for language processing and further evidence that this pattern is heritable (Sommer et al, 2004).…”