Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T22:19:06.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Twin studies of psychosis and the genetics of cerebral asymmetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2018

T. J. Crow
T. J. Crow*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Oxford OX3 7JX. Tel: 01865 226474; Fax: 01865 244990
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Kläning (1999, this issue) reports that dizygotic twins are at increased risk of schizophrenia relative to the general population. Any departure from the first assumption of twin studies that the illness has the same origin in twins as it does in the general population might tell us something about aetiology. Kläning's expectation that monozygotic twins would be at increased risk because such pairs are at increased risk of perinatal complications was not confirmed, adding to the weight of evidence that such complications are unrelated to the origins of psychotic illness. The contrary finding that dizygotic twins are at increased risk draws attention to the nature of dizygotic twinning. Is there something about this process that yields a clue to the origins of psychosis?

Type
Editorials
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 175 , Issue 5 , November 1999 , pp. 399 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

References

Annett, M. (1999) The theory of an agnosic right shift gene in schizophrenia and autism. Schizophrenia Research, 39, 177–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bartley, A. J., Janes, D. W., Torrey, E. F., et al (1993) Sylvian fissure asymmetries in monozygotic twins: a test of laterality in schizophrenia, biological Psychiatry, 34, 853–863.Google Scholar
Boklage, C. E. (1977) Schizophrenia, brain asymmetry development and twinning: cellular relationships with etiological and possibly prognostic implications, biological Psychiatry 12, 19–35.Google ScholarPubMed
Boklage, C. E. (1981) On the distribution of non-right handedness among twins and their families. Acta Geneticae Medicae Gemellologicae, 30, 167–187.Google Scholar
Bonnelykke, B. (1990) Maternal age and parity as predictors of human twinning. Acta Geneticae Medicae Gemellologicae. 39, 329–334.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Corballis, M. C. (1997) The genetics and evolution of handedness. Psychological Review. 104, 714–727.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1990) Temporal lobe asymmetries as the key to the etiology of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 16, 433–443.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1995) The relationship between morphologic and genetic findings in schizophrenia: an evolutionary perspective. In Schizophrenia: An Integrated View. Alfred Benzon Symposium 38 (eds Fog, R. & Gerlach, J.). pp. 15–25. Copenhagen: Munksgaard.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1997) Schizophrenia as failure of hemispheric dominance for language. Trends in Neurosciences. 20, 339–343.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. (1999) Commentary on Annett, Yeo et al, Klar, Saugstad and Orr: Cerebral asymmetry, language and psychosis – the case for a homo-sapiens-specific sex-linked gene for brain growth. Schizophrenia Research, 39, 219–231.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J., Crow, L. R., Done, D. J., et al (1998) Relative hand skill predicts academic ability: global deficits at the point of hemispheric indecision. Neuropsychologia, 36, 1275–1282.Google Scholar
Crow, T. J. & De Lisi, L. E. (1990) The chromosome workshops at the 5th International Congress of Psychiatric Genetics: the weight of the evidence from genome scans. Psychiatric Genetics, 8, 59–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crow, T. J., Frith, C. D., Johnstone, E. C., et al (1991) Crow's lateralization hypothesis for schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry. 48, 86–87.Google Scholar
Highley, J. R., Esiri, M. M., Cortina-Borja, M., et al (1998) Anomalies of cerebral asymmetry in schizophrenia interact with gender and age of onset: a post mortem study. Schizophrenia Research, 34, 13–25.Google Scholar
Kläning, U. (1999, this issue) Increased incidence of schizophrenia in dizygotic twins, but not in monozygotic twins. British Journal of Psychiatry, 175, 407–409.Google Scholar
Klar, A. J. S. (1999) Genetic models for handedness, brain lateralization, schizophrenia and manic-depression. Schizophrenia Research, 39, 207–218.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, S. W., Chitkara, B. & Reveley, A. M. (1989) Hand preference in psychotic twins. Biological Psychiatry, 25, 215–221.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luchins, D. J., Polln, W. & Wyatt, R. J. (1980) Laterality in monozygotic twins: an alternative hypothesis, Biological Psychiatry, 15, 87–93.Google ScholarPubMed
Orr, K., Cannon, M., Gilvarry, C., et al (1999) Schizophrenic patients and their first degree relatives show an excess of mixed handedness. Schizophrenia Research, 39, 167–176.Google Scholar
Petty, R. G. (1999) Structural asymmetries of the human brain and their disturbance in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 25, 121–139.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reveley, M. A., Reveley, A. M. & Baldy, R. (1987) Left hemisphere hypodensity in discordant schizophrenic twins: a controlled study Archives of General Psychiatry, 44, 625–632.Google Scholar
Sharma, T. M., Lancaster, E., Simindsson, T., et al (1999) Lack of cerebral asymmetry in familial schizophrenic patients and their relatives: confirmation of Crow's hypothesis. Schizophrenia Research, in press.Google Scholar
Suddath, R. I., Christison, G. W., Torrey, E. F., et al (1990) Anatomical abnormalities in the brains of monozygotic twins discordant for schizophrenia. New England Journal of Medicine, 322, 789–794.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Torrey, E. F., Ragland, J. D., Gold, J. M., et al (1993) Handedness in twins with schizophrenia: was Boklage correct? Schizophrenia Research, 9, 83–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wareham, K. A., Lyon, M. F., Glenister, R. H., et al (1987) Age related reactivation of an X-linked gene. Nature, 327, 725–727.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weinberger, D. R., Suddath, R. C., Casanova, M. F., et al (1991) Crow's “Lateralisation hypothesis for schizophrenia”. Archives of General Psychiatry, 48, 85.Google Scholar
Yeo, R. A., Gangestad, S. W., Edgar, C., et al (1999) The evolutionary–genetic underpinnings of schizophrenia: the developmental instability model. Schizophrenia Research, 39, 197–206.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.