Psychology Department Promotion Talk with Jen Forsyth

Parsing Heterogeneity and Improving Prediction of Schizophrenia Using Genetic and Developmental Frameworks

Jennifer Forsyth, Ph.D.,  Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Washington

Schizophrenia is a debilitating disorder associated with a complex genetic architecture and considerable clinical heterogeneity. Additionally, existing interventions, which generally involve the introduction of treatment after the onset of full-blown psychosis, yield poor outcomes for many individuals. Understanding the relationship between genetic and clinical heterogeneity in schizophrenia and identifying early markers of schizophrenia risk are promising avenues for improving treatment approaches in the future. The current talk will outline our lab’s recent work along these two lines. First, I will describe our work investigating how differences in genetic architecture and the loading of risk variants for schizophrenia within different neurodevelopmental pathways relates to severe phenotypes in schizophrenia and the general population. Second, I will describe our work exploring early clinical and behavioral markers of risk for schizophrenia and related disorders.

This free lecture is part of the promotion review for Dr. Forsyth in the Department of Psychology.

Committee chair: Lori A. Zoellner zoellner@uw.edu