On the trail of the genetics and pathophysiology of schizophrenia

Most of us engaged in mental health research and services have been astounded by the extraordinary advances in the basic sciences, particularly in the life sciences, during the past 50 years, which is a mere instant in the span of the recorded history of science. We have witnessed the following, among many others: The discovery in 1944 by Seymour Kety (Kety and Schmidt 1945, 1948) of a method to measure precisely the circulation of the blood in the brain, which permitted the measurement of a metabolic activity of the brain while performing various behavioral tasks, as is now being done with positron emission tomography (PET). The introduction of the phenothiazines into the treatment of psychosis, which led to the intensive study of neural receptor and transmitter dynamics in major mental illnesses and the role these receptors and transmitters play in behavior (Deniker 1970; Laborit et al. 1952). Watson and Crick's (1953) discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, which led to a revolution in molecular biology and made possible the discovery of the genetic etiology of many diseases, including some severe mental diseases. The continued but increasingly sophisticated study of brain anatomical mapping and localization, aided by new electronic and computer techniques. And I add to this list the precise measurement of cognitive processes and the ability to partition mental functions like attention into finer units (cf. Posner 1978).