Why do not all high schizotypes develop schizophrenia? Protective factors in people with high risk for schizophrenia using machine learning methods

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Ulrich Ettinger; Professor Dr. Nikolaos Koutsouleris
• Subject Area: Biological Psychiatry ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 278205181

Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric illness with unknown aetiology. An important step in the search for aetiological factors has been the realisation that schizophrenia does not represent a binary phenotype (present, absent) with sudden disease onset. Instead, there is growing agreement that continua between normal and patient populations play an important role. Numerous findings point to phenomenological, genetic, cognitive and neural similarity between schizophrenia and the personality trait of schizotypy. Given this overlap there remains, however, an important question: Why do most people with high levels of schizotypy do not develop schizophrenia? This question leads immediately to a related problem: What are the neural and cognitive differences between highly schizotypal but clinically unaffected individuals and patients with schizophrenia? Put differently, the neural mechanisms (e.g. of resilience) that prevent the outbreak of schizophrenia in high schizotypes are unknown. The present study aims to systematically investigate these mechanisms, for the first time, using machine learning methods. In addition to characterising neural mechanisms we will also assess environmental risk factors and we will obtain a polygenic risk score for schizophrenia in order to investigate the association of these variables with schizotypy and brain structure and function.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants