A team of neuroscientists led by a Wayne State University School of Medicine professor has discovered stark developmental differences in brain network function in children of parents with schizophrenia when compared to those with no family history of mental illness. The study, led by Vaibhav Diwadkar, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences and co-director of the Division of Brain Research and Imaging Neuroscience, was published in the March 2012 issue of the American Medical Association journal Archives of General Psychiatry. The results provide significant insight into plausible origins of schizophrenia in terms of dysfunctional brain networks in adolescence, demonstrate sophisticated analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging data and clarify the understanding of developmental mechanisms in normal versus vulnerable brains. The resulting information can provide unique information to psychiatrists. "Brain network dysfunction associated with emotional processing is a potential predictor for the onset of emotional problems that may occur later in life and that are in turn associated with illnesses like schizophrenia," Diwadkar said. "If you clearly demonstrate there is something amiss in how the brain functions in children, there is something you can do about it. And that's what we're interested in."

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2012/03/14/wsu-research-shows-disordered-brains-in-children-of-schizophrenics/
http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/03/14/children-at-risk-for-schizophrenia-show-brain-network-dysfunction/35963.html
http://www.bradenton.com/2012/03/13/3936386/children-at-risk-for-schizophrenia.html