Smooth pursuit eye tracking deficits serve as an intermediate phenotype for schizophrenia and potentially for psychotic disorders. The Bipolar-Schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotypes consortium took a closer look in a study involving 1,775 individuals.

Participants included the following probands:

• Schizophrenia (n = 265)

• Schizoaffective disorder (n = 178)

• Psychotic bipolar disorder (n = 231)

• Their first-degree relatives (n = 306, n = 217, n = 273, respectively)

• Healthy controls (n = 305)

Among the results:

• Probands from all diagnostic groups were impaired on all pursuit measures vs controls.

• Those with schizophrenia were more impaired than other groups on both early pursuit gain and predictive gain.

• Relatives with and without enhanced psychosis spectrum personality traits were impaired on initial eye acceleration, but not on pursuit gain measures.

• There were no differences in pursuit measures between those in the 3 first-degree relative groups.

Citation: Lencer R, Sprenger A, Reilly J, et al. Pursuit eye movements as an intermediate phenotype across psychotic disorders: Evidence from the B-SNIP study. Schizophr Res. 2015; October 15, 2015. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2015.09.032.