Cultural, Neurocognitive, & Neuropsychiatric Phenotypes of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

Cultural, Neurocognitive, & Neuropsychiatric Phenotypes of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

Investigators

Xavier E. Cagigas, Ph.D.
Rachel Casas, Ph.D.
Robert M. Bilder, Ph.D.
UCLA Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences

Specific Aims

The current pilot project leverages the existing LA5C Project within the Consortium for Neuropsychiatric Phenomics (CNP). The CNP aims to increase understanding of neuropsychiatric disorders by examining brain- and behaviorally-relevant phenotypes on a genome-wide scale (e.g. phenomics). The LA5C Project embraces the phenomics approach by conducting genome-wide analysis with multivariate phenotypes (behavioral, cognitive, and neuroimaging) in a sample of 100 patients each with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and ADHD, as well as, 200 matched healthy people from the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The 500 participants in the LA5C Project receive extensive behavioral and cognitive characterization, and have blood drawn for creation of immortalized cell lines, DNA extraction and analysis, and neuroimaging with the primary goal of identifying genetic variation that is associated with the cognitive and behavioral phenotypes. However, because the LA5C Project is recruiting an ethnically diverse sample of 250 Caucasian and 250 Hispanic adults, it lends itself well to an equally important aim, which is the subject of the Cultural Phenotyping Project: to identify socio-cultural variation that is associated with neurocognitive and behavioral phenotypes in psychosis (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) relative to healthy controls.