Neuroimaging and resilience factors--staging of the at-risk mental state?

Over the past decade, vulnerability- and psychosis-associated structural and functional brain abnormalities in a population at high clinical risk to develop psychosis were intensively studied. We reviewed the results from studies comparing at-risk mental state (ARMS) individuals with and without subsequent transition to psychosis. Additionally, we introduced a new concept of splitting ARMS population according to the duration of the psychosis risk syndrome and their probability to develop psychosis. Studying the ARMS individuals still vulnerable to psychosis but with lower risk to transit can disclose the possible protective-resilience factors or characteristics. Resilience, understood as ability to recover from change, can be thus applied in the early intervention for high clinical risk for psychosis individuals.