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About the Authors:
Gregory A. Light
* E-mail: [email protected]
Affiliations VISN-22 Mental Illness, Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC), San Diego VA Health Care System, La Jolla, California, United States of America, Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
Neal R. Swerdlow
Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
Anthony J. Rissling
Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
Allen Radant
Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
Catherine A. Sugar
Affiliation: Departments of Psychiatry and Biostatistics, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America
Joyce Sprock
Affiliations VISN-22 Mental Illness, Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC), San Diego VA Health Care System, La Jolla, California, United States of America, Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
Marlena Pela
Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
Mark A. Geyer
Affiliations VISN-22 Mental Illness, Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC), San Diego VA Health Care System, La Jolla, California, United States of America, Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
David L. Braff
Affiliations VISN-22 Mental Illness, Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC), San Diego VA Health Care System, La Jolla, California, United States of America, Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
Introduction
One prominent strategy for deconstructing complex, heritable neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia is to examine discrete, genetically determined “endophenotypes” that are part of the illness and detected in the laboratory rather than by “the naked eye” of the clinical interview [1]. Endophenotypes may be useful for deconstructing the complexity of clinical, neural substrate, and genetic underpinnings of the disorder [2], [3]. Several criteria for viable endophenotypes have been proposed [1], [4]–[6]. While there is some variability in the criteria, in general, endophenotypes are a subset of biomarkers that: 1) are associated with the illness, i.e., exhibit deficits in patients; 2) are stable over time; 3) are relatively independent of fluctuations...