Regional mapping of early childhood risk for mental disorders in an Australian population sample.

AIM: Population-level profiles of risk for later childhood mental disorders have been identified in patterns of early developmental vulnerabilities using Australian Early Developmental Census. We sought to demonstrate the geographical distribution of these early childhood risk profiles for mental illness, to inform policy decisions for place-sensitive provision of health and allied services. METHODS: Using geographic information system techniques, we mapped the regional percentage of children at highest risk for mental disorders across the state of New South Wales (NSW), according to Local Government Areas, for 82 891 children in the NSW Child Development Study. RESULTS: A high proportion (>10%) of children at risk of later mental disorders were located in regional and socioeconomically disadvantaged areas, with a few metropolitan regions showing similarly high proportions of the population at risk. CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the potential to identify place-sensitive needs for early intervention and prevention programs for emerging mental health problems in children.

Effects of common GRM5 genetic variants on cognition, hippocampal volume and mGluR5 protein levels in schizophrenia.

GRM5 (coding for metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, mGluR5) is a promising target for the treatment of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, but there has been little investigation of its association with cognitive and brain phenotypes within this disorder. We examined the effects of common genetic variation in GRM5 with cognitive function, hippocampal volume, and hippocampal mGluR5 protein levels in schizophrenia patients relative to healthy controls. Two independent GRM5 variants rs60954128 [C>T] and rs3824927 [G>T] were genotyped in a schizophrenia case/control cohort (n=249/261). High-resolution anatomical brain scans were available for a subset of the cohort (n=103 schizophrenia /78 control). All participants completed a standard set of neuropsychological tests. In a separate postmortem cohort (n=19 schizophrenia/20 controls), hippocampal mGluR5 protein levels were examined among individuals of different GRM5 genotypes. Schizophrenia minor allele carriers of rs60954128 had reduced right hippocampal volume relative to healthy controls of the same genotype (-12.3%); this effect was exaggerated in males with schizophrenia (-15.6%). For rs3824927, compared to major allele homozygotes, minor allele carriers with schizophrenia had lower Intelligence Quotients (IQ). Examination in hippocampal postmortem tissue showed no difference in mGluR5 protein expression according to genotype for either rs60954128 or rs3824927. While these genetic variants in GRM5 were associated with cognitive impairments and right hippocampal volume reduction in schizophrenia, they did not affect protein expression. Further study of these mechanisms may help to delineate new targets for the treatment of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia, and may be relevant to other disorders.

Emotional context processing is impaired in schizophrenia.

INTRODUCTION: Following considerable evidence for impaired context processing and facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia, this study examined the ability of schizophrenia patients to utilise contextual information when judging the meaning of facial expressions. METHODS: 22 healthy and 20 schizophrenia participants completed the "vignette-face" task (Carroll & Russell, 1996) in which target facial expressions are preceded by vignettes describing situational information that is discrepant in affective valence; judgements reflect either the dominance of the emotional context or the facial expression. Measures of basic facial emotion recognition and executive function were also obtained. RESULTS: On the vignette-face task, schizophrenia patients did not utilise contextual information for specific story-face pairs, whereas controls more commonly judged the emotion in line with contextual information. Most consistently, the responses of schizophrenia patients reflected neither situational nor facial cues when contextual cues suggested a complex mental state paired with a negative or threat-related expression (e.g., anger, fear, sadness). Facial affect processing ability was a significant predictor of the successful social context integration in the vignette-face task. CONCLUSION: The reduced influence of context upon threat-related expressions in schizophrenia may contribute to the misperception of threat in situations where contextual information should appease such an interpretation.