A new study has identified an early vulnerability brain marker for psychosis. A research team led by University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center shows that an exaggerated emotional response from the brain to non-threatening and non-emotional cues predicts the emergence of the first signs of psychotic symptoms in late adolescence. The results of this study were published on March 21 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
These results are consistent with hypotheses about how psychosis develops. “Delusions and persecution ideas in psychosis appear as a way to make sense of a person’s tendency to attribute salience to neutral and non-salient environmental stimuli,” explained the study’s lead author, Josiane Bourque, a doctoral student at UdeM’s Department of Psychiatry.
