Rasd2 is a striatal GTP-binding protein that modulates Akt and mTOR signaling cascades, well known to be highly vulnerable pathways in psychiatric disorders.

We investigated the association of Rasd2 and its genetic variation with a series of prefronto-striatal phenotypes related to psychosis in rodents and humans.

We want to provide evidence that Rasd2 controls the vulnerability to schizophrenia-related behavior induced by psychothomimetic drugs in mice. Moreover, we aim to find genetic variations within the Rasd2 gene that influence a series of brain schizophrenia-related phenotypes in human.

Rasd2 knockout mice were employed to evaluate schizophrenia-like behaviors induced by psychotomimetic drugs like amphetamine and phencyclidine. Furthermore, we investigated if RASD2genetic variations in humans are associated with mRNA expression in post-mortem prefrontal cortex, as well as prefrontal and striatal grey matter volume and physiology during working memory as measured with MRI in healthy subjects. Finally, we assessed RASD2mRNA expression levels in post-mortem brains of patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

We found that both psychotomimetics triggered greater vulnerability to motor stimulation and to prepulse inhibition deficits in Rasd2 mutants. In humans, we found that a genetic variation (rs6518956) within RASD2 predicts prefrontal mRNA expression as well as prefrontal grey matter volume and prefronto-striatal activity during working memory. Finally, we reported that RASD2 mRNA expression is slightly reduced in post-mortem prefrontal cortex of patients with schizophrenia.

Collectively, our data suggests that RASD2represents a gene of potential interest in psychiatric disorders for its ability to modulate prefronto-striatal phenotypes related to schizophrenia.

Neuroimaging studies have identified several candidate biomarkers of schizophrenia. However, it is unclear whether the considerable variability in these neurobiological correlates between patients can be translated into the clinical setting.

We aimed to identify neuroimaging predictors of clinical course in patients with schizophrenia. Combined with the identification of genetically determined markers of schizophrenia risk, our studies aimed to elucidate the biological basis and the clinical relevance of inter-individual variability between patients.

We included over 150 patients with schizophrenia and 279 healthy volunteers across five neuroimaging centers in the framework of the IMAGEMEND project [1]. We performed multiple studies on MRI scans using random forests and ROC curves to predict clinical course. Data from healthy controls served to normalize the data from the clinical population and to provide a benchmark for the findings.

We identified ensembles of neuroimaging markers and of genetic variants predictive of clinical course. Results highlight that (i) brain imaging carries significant clinical information, (ii) clinical information at baseline can considerably increase prediction accuracy.

The methodological challenges and the results will be discussed in the context of recent findings from other multi-site studies. We conclude that brain imaging data on their own right are relevant to stratify patients in terms of clinical course; however, complementing these data with other modalities such as genetics and clinical information is necessary to further develop the field towards clinical application of the predictions.

Giulio Pergola is the academic supervisor of a Hoffmann-La Roche Collaboration grant that partially funds his salary.

The GluN2B subunit of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors is crucially involved in the physiology of the prefrontal cortex during working memory (WM). Consistently, genetic variants in the GluN2B coding gene (GRIN2B) have been associated with cognitive phenotypes. However, it is unclear how GRIN2B genetic variation affects gene expression and prefrontal cognitive processing. Using a composite score, we tested the combined effect of GRIN2B variants on prefrontal activity during WM performance in healthy subjects.

We computed a composite score to combine the effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms on post-mortem prefrontal GRIN2B mRNA expression. We then computed the composite score in independent samples of healthy participants in a peripheral blood expression study (n = 46), in a WM behavioural study (n = 116) and in a WM functional magnetic resonance imaging study (n = 122).

Five polymorphisms were associated with GRIN2B expression: rs2160517, rs219931, rs11055792, rs17833967 and rs12814951 (all corrected p < 0.05). The score computed to account for their combined effect reliably indexed gene expression. GRIN2B composite score correlated negatively with intelligence quotient, WM behavioural efficiency and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity. Moreover, there was a non-linear association between GRIN2B genetic score and prefrontal activity, i.e. both high and low putative genetic score levels were associated with high blood oxygen level-dependent signals in the prefrontal cortex.

Multiple genetic variants in GRIN2B are jointly associated with gene expression, prefrontal function and behaviour during WM. These results support the role of GRIN2B genetic variants in WM prefrontal activity in human adults.

Abnormalities in hippocampal–parahippocampal (H-PH) function are prominent features of schizophrenia and have been associated with deficits in episodic memory. However, it remains unclear whether these abnormalities represent a phenotype related to genetic risk for schizophrenia or whether they are related to disease state.

We investigated H-PH-mediated behavior and physiology, using blood oxygenation level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI), during episodic memory in a sample of patients with schizophrenia, clinically unaffected siblings and healthy subjects.

Patients with schizophrenia and unaffected siblings displayed abnormalities in episodic memory performance. During an fMRI memory encoding task, both patients and siblings demonstrated a similar pattern of reduced H-PH engagement compared with healthy subjects.

Our findings suggest that the pathophysiological mechanism underlying the inability of patients with schizophrenia to properly engage the H-PH during episodic memory is related to genetic risk for the disorder. Therefore, H-PH dysfunction can be assumed as a schizophrenia susceptibility-related phenotype.

Emotion dysregulation is a key feature of schizophrenia, a brain disorder strongly associated with genetic risk and aberrant dopamine signalling. Dopamine is inactivated by catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT), whose gene contains a functional polymorphism (COMT Val158Met) associated with differential activity of the enzyme and with brain physiology of emotion processing. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether genetic risk for schizophrenia and COMT Val158Met genotype interact on brain activity during implicit and explicit emotion processing.

A total of 25 patients with schizophrenia, 23 healthy siblings of patients and 24 comparison subjects genotyped for COMT Val158Met underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during implicit and explicit processing of facial stimuli with negative emotional valence.

We found a main effect of diagnosis in the right amygdala, with decreased activity in patients and siblings compared with control subjects. Furthermore, a genotype × diagnosis interaction was found in the left middle frontal gyrus, such that the effect of genetic risk for schizophrenia was evident in the context of the Val/Val genotype only, i.e. the phenotype of reduced activity was present especially in Val/Val patients and siblings. Finally, a complete inversion of the COMT effect between patients and healthy subjects was found in the left striatum during explicit processing.

Overall, these results suggest complex interactions between genetically determined dopamine signalling and risk for schizophrenia on brain activity in the prefrontal cortex during emotion processing. On the other hand, the effects in the striatum may represent state-related epiphenomena of the disorder itself.

Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val158Met has been associated with activity of the mesial temporal lobe during episodic memory and it may weakly increase risk for schizophrenia. However, how this variant affects parahippocampal and hippocampal physiology when dopamine transmission is perturbed is unclear. The aim of the present study was to compare the effects of the COMT Val158Met genotype on parahippocampal and hippocampal physiology during encoding of recognition memory in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy subjects.

Using blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we studied 28 patients with schizophrenia and 33 healthy subjects matched for a series of sociodemographic and genetic variables while they performed a recognition memory task.

We found that healthy subjects had greater parahippocampal and hippocampal activity during memory encoding compared to patients with schizophrenia. We also found different activity of the parahippocampal region between healthy subjects and patients with schizophrenia as a function of the COMT genotype, in that the predicted COMT Met allele dose effect had an opposite direction in controls and patients.

Our results demonstrate a COMT Val158Met genotype by diagnosis interaction in parahippocampal activity during memory encoding and may suggest that modulation of dopamine signaling interacts with other disease-related processes in determining the phenotype of parahippocampal physiology in schizophrenia.