Previous research has demonstrated that schizophrenic subjects exhibit a significantly greater degree of asymmetry on certain morphological traits (e.g., dermatoglyphics) than normal or affectively disordered subjects. It has been assumed that this asymmetry reflects the """"""""fluctuating asymmetry"""""""" associated with high levels of homozygosity at a number of different loci. Research on other polygenic disorders has shown that fluctuating asymmetry can be used as a marker of polygeneic inheritance. Therefore, the observation that, as a group, schizophrenic subjects show marked fluctuating asymmetry suggests a new method for testing hypotheses about the genetic substrate of this disorder. This proposal outlines experiments designed to examine 1) the association between performance on cognitive tasks theorized to be schizophrenic vulnerability markers and degree of fluctuating asymmetry in dermatoglyphic traits; 2) the relationship between dermatoglyphic asymmetry and deviations from normal patterns of cerebral lateralization 3) the relationship between dermatoglyphic asymmetry and certain subgrouping strategies for schizophrenia.
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