Evidence that the COMTVal158Met polymorphism moderates subclinical psychotic and affective symptoms in unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia.

Objectives: Psychotic patients with COMT(Val158Met) Met alleles were recently found to display more intense psychotic and affective responses to daily life stressors. We aimed to test the hypothesis that the Met allele is implicated in the development of affective and psychotic symptomatology in subjects genetically at risk for schizophrenia, by testing if unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia who share a Met allele have greater concordance of symptomatology than relatives not sharing a Met allele.

Methods: Unaffected relatives (n=38) were arranged in as many genetically related pairs as possible (n=26), and Met-sharing between Index Unaffected Subject (IUS) and Related Unaffected Subject (RUS) was assessed.

Fluctuations in self-esteem and paranoia in the context of daily life.

Studies investigating the relationship between self-esteem and paranoia have specifically focused on self-esteem level, but have neglected the dynamic aspects of self-esteem. In the present article, the authors investigated the relationship between self-esteem and paranoia in two different ways. First, 154 individuals ranging across the continuum in level of paranoia were studied with the Experience Sampling Method (a structured self-assessment diary technique) to assess the association between trait paranoia and level and fluctuation of self-esteem in daily life.

Does the concept of "sensitization" provide a plausible mechanism for the putative link between the environment and schizophrenia?

Previous evidence reviewed in Schizophrenia Bulletin suggests the importance of a range of different environmental factors in the development of psychotic illness. It is unlikely, however, that the diversity of environmental influences associated with schizophrenia can be linked to as many different underlying mechanisms. There is evidence that environmental exposures may induce, in interaction with (epi)genetic factors, psychological or physiological alterations that can be traced to a final common pathway of cognitive biases and/or altered dopamine neurotransmission, broadly referred to as "sensitization," facilitating the onset and persistence of psychotic symptoms.

Impairment of self-monitoring: part of the endophenotypic risk for psychosis.

Background: A disorder of self-monitoring may underlie the positive symptoms of psychosis. The cognitive mechanisms associated with these symptoms may also be detectable in individuals at risk of psychosis.

Aims: To investigate (a) whether patients with psychosis show impaired self-monitoring, (b) to what degree this is associated with positive symptoms, and (c) whether this is associated with liability to psychotic symptoms.

Evidence for a relationship between mentalising deficits and paranoia over the psychosis continuum.

Objective: Failing of mentalising has been suggested to underlie certain symptoms of psychosis. An as yet unresolved issue is whether mentalising deficits reflect a characteristic which can also be detected in people at risk for psychosis or people with evidence of subclinical expression of psychosis. This study wanted to assess an aspect of mentalising in four groups with different levels of psychosis vulnerability, and to examine associations between mentalising and symptoms of psychosis.

Genetic risk of depression and stress-induced negative affect in daily life.

Background: A bias to develop negative affect in response to daily life stressors may be an important depression endophenotype, but remains difficult to assess.

Aims: To assess this mood bias endophenotype, uncontaminated by current mood, in the course of daily life.

Method: The experience sampling method was used to collect multiple appraisals of daily life event-related stress and negative affect in 279 female twin pairs.

When the need to belong goes wrong: the expression of social anhedonia and social anxiety in daily life.

People possess an innate need to belong that drives social interactions. Aberrations in the need to belong, such as social anhedonia and social anxiety, provide a point of entry for examining this need. The current study used experience-sampling methodology to explore deviations in the need to belong in the daily lives of 245 undergraduates.

The catechol-O-methyl transferase Val158Met polymorphism and experience of reward in the flow of daily life.

Genetic moderation of experience of reward in response to environmental stimuli is relevant for the study of many psychiatric disorders. Experience of reward, however, is difficult to capture, as it involves small fluctuations in affect in response to small events in the flow of daily life. This study examined a momentary assessment reward phenotype in relation to the catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) Val(158)Met polymorphism.

COMT Val158Met moderation of stress-induced psychosis.

Background: Exposure to stressful life events increases the risk of developing a psychotic disorder. Moreover, increased reactivity to stress seems to represent part of the vulnerability for psychosis. This study aimed to investigate whether a functional polymorphism in the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT Val(158)Met) gene moderates the psychosis-inducing effects of stress.

For whom the mind wanders, and when: an experience-sampling study of working memory and executive control in daily life.

An experience-sampling study of 124 undergraduates, pretested on complex memory-span tasks, examined the relation between working memory capacity (WMC) and the experience of mind wandering in daily life. Over 7 days, personal digital assistants signaled subjects eight times daily to report immediately whether their thoughts had wandered from their current activity, and to describe their psychological and physical context. WMC moderated the relation between mind wandering and activities' cognitive demand.

Evidence that the COMT(Val158Met) polymorphism moderates sensitivity to stress in psychosis: an experience-sampling study.

Gene-environment interactions involving the catechol-O-methyltransferase Val(158)Met polymorphism (COMT(Val158Met)) have been implicated in the causation of psychosis. Evidence from general population studies suggests that Met/Met subjects are sensitive to stress, a trait associated with psychosis. We hypothesized that the Met allele would moderate the effects of stress on negative affect (NA) in controls, and on NA and psychosis in patients with a psychotic disorder.

Evidence that moment-to-moment variation in positive emotions buffer genetic risk for depression: a momentary assessment twin study.

Objective: The negative affective response to daily life stressors, which previous work suggest is a fundamental depression endophenotype, may be moderated by positive emotions. It was investigated whether positive affect (PA) buffers negative affect (NA) reactivity in response to stress and whether PA moderates the genetic predisposition to negative affect reactivity.

Method: A total of 279 twin pairs participated in a momentary assessment study with the experience sampling method, collecting appraisals of stress and affect in the flow of daily life.

The expression of adult ADHD symptoms in daily life: an application of experience sampling methodology.

Objective: To use experience sampling method (ESM) to examine the impact of inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive ADHD symptoms on emotional well-being, activities and distress, cognitive impairment, and social functioning assessed in the daily lives of young adults. The impact of subjective appraisals on their experiences is also examined.

Method: Participants (n = 206) complete up to 56 in-the-moment assessments of mood and current activities using Personal Digital Assistants for 1 week.

The relationship between cognitive dysfunction and stress sensitivity in schizophrenia: a replication study.

The aim of the current study was to replicate the finding that cognitive impairments are not or inversely associated with sensitivity to stress in a sample of 25 patients diagnosed with psychotic disorder. The results indicated that impairments in performance on the Trailmaking Test and the Stroop Color Word Test were inversely associated with sensitivity to stress in daily life, whereas impairment in a subtest of the Behavioral Assessment of Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS) was not associated with stress-sensitivity. The data thus show that in some instances cognitive functioning is not, and in other instances is inversely associated with momentary sensitivity to stress.

Does normal developmental expression of psychosis combine with environmental risk to cause persistence of psychosis? A psychosis proneness-persistence model.

Background: Research suggests that low-grade psychotic experiences in the general population are a common but transitory developmental phenomenon. Using two independent general population samples, the hypothesis was examined that common, non-clinical developmental expression of psychosis may become abnormally persistent when synergistically combined with developmental exposures that may impact on behavioural and neurotransmitter sensitization such as cannabis, trauma and urbanicity.

Method: The amount of synergism was estimated from the additive statistical interaction between baseline cannabis use, childhood trauma and urbanicity on the one hand, and baseline psychotic experiences on the other, in predicting 3-year follow-up psychotic experiences, using data from two large, longitudinal, random population samples from the Netherlands [The Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS)] and Germany [The Early Developmental Stages of Psychopathology (EDSP) study].

Verbal self-monitoring in psychosis: a non-replication.

Background: Current cognitive models of positive symptoms of psychosis suggest a mechanism of defective self-monitoring that may be relevant for (i) expression of psychosis at the clinical and subclinical level and (ii) transmission of risk for psychosis.

Method: The study included 41 patients with psychosis, 39 non-psychotic first-degree relatives, 39 subjects from the general population with a high level of positive psychotic experiences, and 52 healthy controls with an average level of positive psychotic experiences. All subjects performed a speech attribution task in which single adjectives with a complimentary or derogatory meaning were presented to them on a computer screen; subjects had to read aloud and determine the source (self/other/uncertain) of the words they heard.

Stress-reactivity in psychosis: evidence for an affective pathway to psychosis.

This paper will review a series of studies using the Experience Sampling Method that suggest that altered sensitivity to stress is an endophenotype for psychosis. The Experience Sampling Method is a structured diary technique allowing the assessment of emotional reactivity to stressors occurring in normal daily life. Elevated emotional reactivity to stress was found in subjects vulnerable to psychosis, suggesting that affective responses to stressors in the flow of daily life are an indicator of genetic and/or environmental liability to psychosis.

Instability in self-esteem and paranoia in a general population sample.

Background: Research on the association between paranoia and self-esteem has yielded inconsistent findings. Some studies have indicated an association between paranoia and low self-esteem, while other studies have shown an association with high self-esteem. A plausible explanation for these inconsistencies is that self-esteem is unstable in paranoid individuals.

Premorbid IQ as a predictor for the course of IQ in first onset patients with schizophrenia: a 10-year follow-up study.

The aim of the present study was to examine the longitudinal course of IQ and its heterogeneity in patients with schizophrenia, from the perspective of the two main "subtypes" of schizophrenia described in the literature: progressive cognitive deficit versus cognitive stabilisation or recovery. Premorbid IQ scores and WAIS IQ scores of 100 first onset patients were obtained at first hospitalization (T1) and after 10 years (T2). Significant changes in IQ over time were found, representing (i) at T1, a deterioration compared to premorbid intelligence (B=-6.

Childhood trauma and emotional reactivity to daily life stress in adult frequent attenders of general practitioners.

Objectives: Childhood trauma (CT) has consistently been associated with neuroticism--a personality trait reflecting vulnerability to stress. However, not much is known about the impact of a history of trauma on moment-to-moment emotions and experiences in the flow of daily life. The relationship between CT and emotional reactivity to daily life stress was investigated.

Hearing impairment and psychosis: a replication in a cohort of young adults.

Previous work has demonstrated an association between hearing impairment and psychosis. In the current study, this association was studied in a cohort of young people. In addition, it was studied to what degree duration of hearing problems (i.

The schizophrenia envirome.

Purpose Of Review: To show which aspects of the environment increase the risk for schizophrenia and how they interact with pre-existing liability for psychosis.

Recent Findings: Not only does cannabis survive as a risk factor for psychosis, but the evidence is showing concrete synergistic effects between cannabis and pre-existing liability to psychosis. The urban environment is, in terms of attributable risk, the most important proxy environmental risk factor.

Childhood victimisation and developmental expression of non-clinical delusional ideation and hallucinatory experiences: victimisation and non-clinical psychotic experiences.

Background: Victimisation in childhood may be associated with adult psychosis. The current study examined this association in the crucial developmental period of early adolescence and investigated whether (1) unwanted sexual experiences, and (2) being bullied, were associated with non-clinical delusional ideation and hallucinatory experiences in a general population sample of 14 year olds.

Methods: Data were derived from standard health screenings of the Youth Health Care Divisions of the Municipal Health Services in Maastricht, the Netherlands.

Genes making one feel blue in the flow of daily life: a momentary assessment study of gene-stress interaction.

Objective: Individual differences in stress reactivity constitute a crucially important mechanism of risk for depression. Because stress can be conceptualized as the continuous occurrence of minor daily hassles, this study focused on emotional reactivity to stress in the flow of daily life and examined to what degree individual differences in emotional reactivity could be explained by genetic and/or environmental factors.

Methods: Two hundred seventy-five female twin pairs (170 monozygotic and 105 dizygotic) participated in this experience sampling study (ESM).

Data gathering: biased in psychosis?

This study examined whether the probabilistic reasoning bias referred to as a "jumping-to-conclusions" (JTC) style of reasoning, which, according to previous research, is associated with particular psychotic symptoms such as delusions, represents a trait that can also be detected in nonpsychotic relatives of patients with schizophrenia and in nonpsychotic individuals with a high level of psychotic experiences. Participants were, in order of level of psychosis liability, 40 patients with schizophrenia or a schizoaffective disorder, 40 first-degree nonpsychotic relatives, 41 participants from the general population with above average expression of psychotic experiences, and 53 participants from the general population with an average level of psychotic experiences. A "jumping-to-conclusions" bias was assessed using the beads task.