The Association Between Aberrant Salience and Psychotic Experiences in General Population Twins, and Genetic Vulnerability As a Modifier

Overview

Journal BMC Psychiatry

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialty Psychiatry

Date 2024 Oct 27

PMID 39462331

Authors

Marjan Drukker

Tatvan Todor

Jelle Bongaarts

Eleonora Broggi

Mihika Kelkar

Thomas Wigglesworth

Kayle Verhiel

Karel van Leeuwen

Meinte Koster

Catherine Derom

Evert Thiery

Marc De Hert

Claudia Menne-Lothmann

Jeroen Decoster

Dina Collip

Ruud van Winkel

Nele Jacobs

Sinan Guloksuz

Bart Rutten

Jim van Os

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Previous studies assessing the hypothesis that the construct of 'aberrant salience' is associated with psychosis and psychotic symptoms showed conflicting results. For this reason, the association between measures to index aberrant salience and subclinical psychotic symptoms in a general population sample was analysed. In addition, genetic vulnerability was added to the analysis as a modifier to test the hypothesis that modification by genetic vulnerability may explain variability in the results.

Methods: The TwinssCan project obtained data from general population twins (N = 887). CAPE (Community Assessment of Psychic Experience) scores were used to index psychotic experiences. Aberrant salience was assessed with white noise task and ambiguous situations task.

Results: Measures of aberrant salience were not associated with psychotic experiences, nor was there evidence for an interaction with genetic predisposition in this association (Z = 1.08, p = 0.282).

Conclusions: Various studies including the present could not replicate the association between aberrant salience and psychotic experiences in general population samples. The conflicting findings might be explained by moderation by genetic vulnerability, but results are inconsistent. If there was evidence for a main effect or interaction, this was in the positive symptom scale only. On the other hand, the association was more robust in so-called 'ultra-high risk' patients and first episode psychosis patients. Thus, this association may represent a state-dependent association, present only at the more severe end of the psychosis spectrum.

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