Cambridge Cognition : Genetic variations conferring risk of autism and schizophrenia affect cognition in controls

A recent paper by an international group of scientists and published in Nature has found that alleles of copy-number variants (CNV's) conferring risk of autism or schizophrenia affect cognition in controls using CANTAB tests as part of their assessment.

The ground-breaking study demonstrates the potential of CANTAB to provide convergent information alongside genetic and imaging studies, providing insight into the neural and genetic basis of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Autism and Schizophrenia are common psychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions which are associated with differences in cognitive performance. Both disorders are known to have a genetic component, although there is no single gene which causes either condition. Instead, differences in the numbers of copies of a number of genes increase the risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders.

These small genetic changes are also seen in people with no diagnosis of learning difficulties of psychiatric disorders. Discovering whether these genetic changes are associated with differences in cognition or brain structure in healthy people will help scientists understand how schizophrenia and autism develop.

CANTAB tests were chosen as they have consistently been found to be sensitive to cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. Using the CANTAB tasks for spatial working memory (SWM) and rapid visual information processing (RVIP) the authors found that those carrying the genetic variations which increased risk of neurocognitive disorders showed cognitive performance which was at a level between controls and those with clinical schizophrenia. Control participants carrying variations not associated with neuropsychiatric conditions did not show this pattern of cognitive changes. In addition, they also found that there were subtle changes in the density of grey and white matter in the brains of healthy participants with genetic risk markers.

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