ABSTRACT
This book describes key ®ndings from the Maudsley Family Study of Psychosis, which was developed to investigate intermediate phenotypes of psychotic illness. As outlined in the preface, a core theme addressed by the studies is `what neurobiological abnormalities do the unaffected relatives of patients who are at high genetic liability for psychosis display?' The different arms of the study have indeed detected certain neurobiological abnormalities in relatives at high genetic liability for the illness and thus rejected the null hypothesis ± that unaffected relatives do not differ from healthy volunteers. As is typical of scienti®c endeavours, the study poses many new questions while putting forward answers to the original ones ± some of these questions are currently being addressed by further phases of the study, which continues to evolve to take advantage of new technological developments and discoveries emanating from related areas of psychosis research such as molecular genetics. This chapter summarizes and integrates the key ®ndings described in preceding chapters and describes how this study and others will attempt to address new questions in the years ahead in order to better understand the aetiopathogenesis of psychotic illness.
